Israel had offered to sell nuclear bomb to South Africa during apartheid era in the 1970s, the Guardian reported on Monday.
Israel offer to sell nuclear warheads to the apartheid regime has been revealed by secret South African documents, report claimed, adding that this was the first official documentary evidence of Israel’s possession of nuclear weapons.
American academic Dr Sasha Polakow-Suransky discovered the documents, which are “top secret” minutes of meetings in 1975 between South Africa’s defence minister P.W. Botha and Israel’s defence minister Shimon Peres. Mr Peres is the President of Israel at present.
Mr Botha had asked for the nuclear warheads from Israel and Mr Peres had responded by offering them “in three sizes,” the report said. The two defence ministers had signed a broad-ranging agreement governing military ties between the two countries that included a clause declaring that “the very existence of this agreement” was to remain secret.
The documents have been published by Dr Polakow-Suransky in his book, The Unspoken Alliance: Israel’s secret alliance with apartheid South Africa, which was published in the United States this week.
Israel pressured the South African government not to declassify documents obtained by Dr Polakow-Suransky, the newspaper said. “The Israeli defence ministry tried to block my access to the Secment agreement on the grounds it was sensitive material, especially the signature and the date,” the author said. “The South Africans didn’t seem to care; they blacked out a few lines and handed it over to me.”