UK Government helped Israel get the A Bomb

The BBC Newsnight program has discovered documents that proove the UK government helped Israel to aquire the atomic bomb

'1958, Britain agreed to sell Israel 20 tonnes of heavy water, a vital ingredient for the production of plutonium at Israel's top secret Dimona nuclear reactor in the Negev desert. '

British officials decided it would be "over-zealous" to impose safeguards on the Israelis, and chose not to insist that Israel only use the heavy water for peaceful purposes

More extraordinary, the archives suggest that the decision to sell heavy water was taken simply by civil servants, mainly in the Foreign Office and the UK Atomic Energy Authority.

asked if the Government at the time would have known about the deal former Conservative Defence and Foreign Office minister Lord Gilmour said One must assume they must have known ... And what's more they seemed to have no idea of the political or indeed even the technical and foreign policy implications of what they were doing. They just seemed to be concerned with making a bit of money."

"On the whole I would prefer NOT to mention this to the Americans," stated Donald Cape of the Foreign Office. When contacted by Newsnight this week,

I bet you would Donald

full newsnight story Here

for those in the UK the BBC will be showing a newsnight special tonight at 10:30 on this issue .. to those outside the UK you 'may' be able to watch on the Newsnight(bbc) web site