Revealed: how Israel offered to sell South Africa nuclear weapons

May 24, 2010 by legitgov

Revealed: how Israel offered to sell South Africa nuclear weapons --Secret apartheid-era papers give first official evidence of Israeli nuclear weapons 23 May 2010 Secret South African documents reveal that Israel offered to sell nuclear warheads to the apartheid regime, providing the first official documentary evidence of the state's possession of nuclear weapons. The "top secret" minutes of meetings between senior officials from the two countries in 1975 show that South Africa'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.