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Britain “aided Israel’s nuclear arms programme”

Updated: 13/Mar/2006 18:35

The Dimona Reactor Dome

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Britain supplied Israel with a small amount of plutonium in 1966, which officials said could have aided a nuclear arms programme, according to the BBC.

The report, revealed last week on the BBC’s current affairs news programme Newsnight, said that in the 1960’s Britain also made hundreds of shipments of restricted materials to Israel despite a warning from intelligence officials that it could help in the development of a nuclear bomb.

The report was based on secret documents that have been made public under freedom and information laws. According to the BBC, the Labour government, under Prime Minister Harold Wilson, sold Israel lithium compounds which could have enabled Israel to make weapons 10 times as powerful as the atom bomb dropped by the Americans on the Japanese city of Hiroshima in 1945.

Although Israel would have needed almost 5kg of plutonium for an atom bomb, British officials were warned the amount had “significant military value” and could be used in experiments to speed up the development of nuclear arms, according to the BBC report.

Strong opposition

The BBC said that both the Foreign Ministry and Ministry of Defence opposed the proposed dealings but it was pushed through by Mike Michaels, a Jewish civil servant in the Ministry of Technology.

Tony Benn, who served as technology minister under Wilson, said he had no knowledge of the decision although he had suspected civil servants were doing deals behind his back.

“I’m not only surprised, I’m shocked. It never occurred to me they would authorise something so totally against the policy of the government,” he told the BBC.

The British Foreign Office had no immediate comment on the BBC report.

Last year Newsnight reported that in the late 1950’s Britain provided Israel with the 20 tonnes of heavy water needed to start up the Dimona reactor in southern Israel.

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