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<h1 itemprop="name headline ">Revealed: how Israel offered to sell
South Africa nuclear weapons</h1>
<div itemprop="description" id="stand-first" class="stand-first-alone"
data-component="Article:standfirst_cta"><strong>Exclusive:</strong>
Secret apartheid-era papers give first official evidence of Israeli
nuclear weapons</div>
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<ul class="article-attributes trackable-component b4"
data-component="Article:byline">
<li class="byline">
<div class="contributor-full"> <span itemscope="" itemprop="author"
itemtype="http://schema.org/Person"><span itemprop="name"><a
class="contributor" rel="author" itemprop="url"
href="http://www.theguardian.com/profile/chrismcgreal">Chris McGreal</a></span></span>
in Washington </div>
</li>
<li class="publication"><a itemprop="publisher"
href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/theguardian">The Guardian</a>, <time
itemprop="datePublished" datetime="2010-05-23" pubdate="">Sunday 23
May 2010</time></li>
<li class="publication"><b><small><small><small><a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://www.theguardian.com/world/2010/may/23/israel-south-africa-nuclear-weapons">http://www.theguardian.com/world/2010/may/23/israel-south-africa-nuclear-weapons</a></small></small></small></b><br>
</li>
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<div id="main-content-picture" itemscope="" itemprop="image"
itemtype="http://schema.org/ImageObject"> <br>
<div class="caption" itemprop="caption">The secret military agreement
signed by Shimon Peres, now president of Israel, and P W Botha of South
Africa. Photograph: Guardian</div>
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<p>Secret South African documents reveal that <a
href="http://www.theguardian.com/world/israel"
title="More from the Guardian on Israel">Israel</a> offered to sell
nuclear warheads to the apartheid regime, providing the <a
href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/may/23/israel-south-africa-nuclear-documents"
title="">first official documentary evidence</a> of the state's
possession of <a
href="http://www.theguardian.com/world/nuclear-weapons"
title="More from the Guardian on Nuclear weapons">nuclear weapons</a>.</p>
<p>The "top secret" minutes of meetings between senior officials from
the two countries in 1975 show that South <a
href="http://www.theguardian.com/world/africa"
title="More from the Guardian on Africa">Africa</a>'s defence
minister, PW Botha, asked for the warheads and Shimon Peres, then
Israel's defence minister and now its president, responded by offering
them "in three sizes". The two men also 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.</p>
<p>The documents, uncovered by an American academic, Sasha
Polakow-Suransky, in research for a book on the close relationship
between the two countries, provide evidence that Israel has nuclear
weapons despite its policy of "ambiguity" in neither confirming nor
denying their existence.</p>
<p>The Israeli authorities tried to stop <a
href="http://www.theguardian.com/world/southafrica"
title="More from the Guardian on South Africa">South Africa</a>'s
post-apartheid government declassifying the documents at
Polakow-Suransky's request and the revelations will be an
embarrassment, particularly as this week's nuclear non-proliferation
talks in New York focus on the Middle East.</p>
<p>They will also undermine Israel's attempts to suggest that, if it
has nuclear weapons, it is a "responsible" power that would not misuse
them, whereas countries such as Iran cannot be trusted.</p>
<p>A spokeswoman for Peres today said the report was baseless and there
were "never any negotiations" between the two countries. She did not
comment on the authenticity of the documents.</p>
<p>South African documents show that the apartheid-era military wanted
the missiles as a deterrent and for potential strikes against
neighbouring states.</p>
<p>The documents show both sides met on 31 March 1975. Polakow-Suransky
writes in his book published in the US this week, The Unspoken
Alliance: Israel's secret alliance with apartheid South Africa. At the
talks Israeli officials "formally offered to sell South Africa some of
the nuclear-capable Jericho missiles in its arsenal".</p>
<p>Among those attending the meeting was the South African military
chief of staff, Lieutenant General RF Armstrong. He immediately drew up
a memo in which he laid out the benefits of South Africa obtaining the
Jericho missiles but only if they were fitted with nuclear weapons.</p>
<p>The memo, marked "top secret" and dated the same day as the meeting
with the Israelis, has previously been revealed but its context was not
fully understood because it was not known to be directly linked to the
Israeli offer on the same day and that it was the basis for a direct
request to Israel. In it, Armstrong writes: "In considering the merits
of a weapon system such as the one being offered, certain assumptions
have been made: a) That the missiles will be armed with nuclear
warheads manufactured in RSA (Republic of South Africa) or acquired
elsewhere."</p>
<p>But South Africa was years from being able to build atomic weapons.
A little more than two months later, on 4 June, Peres and Botha met in
Zurich. By then the Jericho project had the codename Chalet.</p>
<p>The top secret minutes of the meeting record that: "Minister Botha
expressed interest in a limited number of units of Chalet subject to
the correct payload being available." The document then records:
"Minister Peres said the correct payload was available in three sizes.
Minister Botha expressed his appreciation and said that he would ask
for advice." The "three sizes" are believed to refer to the
conventional, chemical and nuclear weapons.</p>
<p>The use of a euphemism, the "correct payload", reflects Israeli
sensitivity over the nuclear issue and would not have been used had it
been referring to conventional weapons. It can also only have meant
nuclear warheads as Armstrong's memorandum makes clear South Africa was
interested in the Jericho missiles solely as a means of delivering
nuclear weapons.</p>
<p>In addition, the only payload the South Africans would have needed
to obtain from Israel was nuclear. The South Africans were capable of
putting together other warheads.</p>
<p>Botha did not go ahead with the deal in part because of the cost. In
addition, any deal would have to have had final approval by Israel's
prime minister and it is uncertain it would have been forthcoming.</p>
<p>South Africa eventually built its own nuclear bombs, albeit possibly
with Israeli assistance. But the collaboration on military technology
only grew over the following years. South Africa also provided much of
the yellowcake uranium that Israel required to develop its weapons.</p>
<p>The documents confirm accounts by a former South African naval
commander, Dieter Gerhardt – jailed in 1983 for spying for the Soviet
Union. After his release with the collapse of apartheid, Gerhardt said
there was an agreement between Israel and South Africa called Chalet
which involved an offer by the Jewish state to arm eight Jericho
missiles with "special warheads". Gerhardt said these were atomic
bombs. But until now there has been no documentary evidence of the
offer.</p>
<p>Some weeks before Peres made his offer of nuclear warheads to Botha,
the two defence ministers signed a covert agreement governing the
military alliance known as Secment. It was so secret that it included a
denial of its own existence: "It is hereby expressly agreed that the
very existence of this agreement... shall be secret and shall not be
disclosed by either party".</p>
<p>The agreement also said that neither party could unilaterally
renounce it.</p>
<p>The existence of Israel's nuclear weapons programme was revealed by
Mordechai Vanunu to the Sunday Times in 1986. He provided photographs
taken inside the Dimona nuclear site and gave detailed descriptions of
the processes involved in producing part of the nuclear material but
provided no written documentation.</p>
<p>Documents seized by Iranian students from the US embassy in Tehran
after the 1979 revolution revealed the Shah expressed an interest to
Israel in developing nuclear arms. But the South African documents
offer confirmation Israel was in a position to arm Jericho missiles
with nuclear warheads.</p>
<p>Israel pressured the present South African government not to
declassify documents obtained by Polakow-Suransky. "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," he said. "The South Africans didn't seem to care; they blacked
out a few lines and handed it over to me. The ANC government is not so
worried about protecting the dirty laundry of the apartheid regime's
old allies."</p>
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