Israel tentou vender ogivas ao “apartheid” sul-africano

[FOXTROT]

Ok será divulgada por MP, já somos quantos na C.A.S.F.D.B? Tem o Ilya Ehrenburg que é do clube.

tem gente que vai ter um ataque com a fundação da C.A.S.F.D.B


Saudações

[kurgan]

será divulgado por MP , "eles" (mossad) andem aí...

Me recuso ir a uma reunião com "eles" (mossad) toda vez que um membro do C.A.S.F.D.B tenta falar sobre Israel, "eles" (mossad) pedem a palavra e despejam discursos de 5 horas , no mínimo, sobre e contra o Irã, Síria, Hamas, Hezbollah entre outros.Esses discursos são pura tortura...

[P44]

não posso dizer, mas somos mais que as mães, brotamos da terra como cogumelos


e voltando ao tema

segunda-feira, 24 de Maio de 2010 | 10:18

Israel ofereceu ogivas nucleares à África do Sul do apartheid

Israel ofereceu ogivas nucleares ao regime segregacionista sul-africano em 1975, segundo documentos secretos que constituem a primeira prova concreta da posse de armas atómicas pelo Estado judeu.

Minutas das reuniões realizadas por altos dirigentes de ambos os países em 1975 indicam, segundo informa hoje o jornal britânico The Guardian, que o ministro de Defesa sul-africano, Pieter Willem Botha, solicitou as bombas e o seu homólogo israelita Shimon Peres, hoje presidente de Israel, as ofereceu «em três tamanhos».

Ambos os políticos assinaram também um amplo acordo que incluía uma cláusula pela qual se declarava secreta a própria existência desse comprometedor documento.

O documento, descoberto pelo académico norte-americano Sasha Polakow-Suransky enquanto preparava um livro sobre a estreita relação entre os dois países, prova que Israel dispõe da arma atómica apesar da sua política de «ambiguidade» mediante a qual nem o nega nem o confirma.

Segundo o The Guardian, as autoridades israelitas tentaram impedir que o Governo sul-africano pós-apartheid desclassificasse o documento a pedido de Polakow-Suransky.

Essa revelação tem especial importância esta semana, na qual as conversas sobre não-proliferação nuclear que se realizam em Nova Iorque se centram na situação do Médio Oriente.

Também lança por terra a pretensão israelita de se apresentar como um país «responsável» que em nenhum caso abusaria das suas bombas nucleares, ao contrário de outros como o actual Irão.

Polakow-Suranksy dedicou ao tema um livro intitulado «The Unspoken Alliance: Israel's secrety alliance with apartheid South África», que será publicado esta semana nos Estados Unidos.

Segundo o autor, entre as pessoas que participaram naquela reunião a 31 de Março de 1975 estava o chefe do Estado-Maior sul-africano, o tenente-general RF Armstrong.

Este elaborou imediatamente um memorando que assinalava os benefícios que representaria para o país a obtenção dos mísseis Jericho armados com ogivas nucleares.

Pouco mais de duas semanas mais tarde, no dia 4 de Junho, Peres e Botha tiveram uma reunião em Zurique na qual se abordou o projecto Jericho.

As minutas secretas dessa segunda reunião assinalam que «o ministro Botha manifestou o seu interesse num número limitado de unidades, sempre e quando estivesse disponível a carga correta».

«O ministro Perez explicou que a carga correcta estava disponível em três tamanhos. O ministro Botha expressou a sua gratidão e disse que pediria conselho», lê-se no documento.

Segundo o jornal, a expressão «três tamanhos» refere-se supostamente aos três tipos de armas: convencionais, químicas e nucleares.

Israel não tinha recorrido ao eufemismo, «carga correcta» para se referir a armas convencionais e reflecte a sensibilidade israelita em tudo ao que se relaciona às suas armas nucleares.

Tal só se pode referir a armas nucleares, já que o memorando do tenente-general sul-africano Armstrong deixa perfeitamente claro que a África do Sul estava interessada nos mísseis Jericho só para transportar armas nucleares.

O acordo não chegou a ser assinado, em parte pelo custo que representava. Além disso, seria necessária a aprovação final do primeiro-ministro israelita, o que não era de todo seguro, escreve The Guardian.

A África do Sul chegou a fabricar as suas próprias armas atómicas, possivelmente com ajuda israelita, mas a colaboração entre ambos os países em matéria de tecnologia militar se intensificou ao longo dos anos.

A África do Sul proviu a Israel boa parte do urânio que este país precisava para desenvolver as suas armas nucleares.

Os documentos confirmam a versão do ex-chefe naval sul-africano Dieter Gerhard ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dieter_Gerhardt ), preso em 1983 por espiar a favor da União Soviética.

Após a sua libertação, Gerhard disse que existia um acordo entre Israel e a África do Sul que consistiu numa oferta pelo Estado judeu de armar oito mísseis tipo Jericho com «ogivas especiais», termo que, segundo aquele, se referia às nucleares.

http://diariodigital.sapo.pt/news.asp?s ... 850&page=4


tb interessante de ler...

Second, if the existence of stories supporting the hypothesized test are taken as a requisite for believing that it occurred then this condition was well satisfied by 1991 when Hersh recounted detailed stories about an Israeli-South African test collaboration in The Samson Option [Hersh 1991; pg. 271-272]. In his treatment Hersh takes the reality of the test as a given, a matter beyond dispute. He refers to former Israeli government officials who indicated that the flash was a test of a low yield nuclear artillery shell, and was actually the third such test in the area. At least two Israeli navy ships had sailed to the site and a contingent of Israelis, and the South Africa navy was observing the test. The tests were conducted under cover of bad weather, but a gap in the clouds allowed the detection.

Similarly Barnaby claims that South African naval ships were operating in the area the night of the test, citing an African Educational Fund study on the incident [Barnaby 1989; pg. 17].

Hersh reports interviewing several members of the Nuclear Intelligence Panel (NIP), which had conducted their own investigation of the event. Those interviewed included its leader Donald M. Kerr, Jr. and eminent nuclear weapons program veteran Harold M. Agnew. The NIP members concluded unanimously that it was a definite nuclear test. Another member - Louis H. Roddis, Jr. - concluded that "the South African-Israeli test had taken place on a barge, or on one of the islands in the South Indian Ocean archipelago" [Hersh 1991; pg. 280-281]. He also cite internal CIA estimates made in 1979 and 1980 which concluded that it had been a test.

The U.S. Naval Research Laboratory conducted a comprehensive analysis, including the hydroacoustic data, and issued a 300-page report concluding that there had been a nuclear event near Prince Edward Island or Antarctica [Albright 1994b].

The failure of the panel to affirm the existence of the test seems to reflect the nature of the panel and its mandate more than a failure of the evidence. Dave Simons of Nonproliferation and Arms Control Research and Development (NIS-RD) said that similar discrepancies had been observed in Vela signals from earlier confirmed atmospheric tests and is quoted as saying: "The whole federal laboratory community came to the conclusion that the data indicated a bomb," [LANL Daily News Bulletin 1997].
Claims and Speculation: 1981 To The Present

The principle question that has hung in the air for the last 20 plus years has been more along the lines of "whose test was it?" than "was it really a test?". The choices were basically:

* it was a South African test,
* it was an Israeli test,
* it was a joint South African-Israeli test.

But attempting to decide on one of these hypotheses is necessarily based either on guesswork or reliance on one or more hearsay or anonymous reports of uncertain (or outright suspect) reliability.

The possible theories of responsibility remain the same as in 1979, although more information is now available to flesh them out.

By the time of the Vela detection it was universally believed that Israel had a sophisticated nuclear weapons program (this was well before the Vanunu revelations in 1986). South Africa was known to be pursuing a weapons program, but the status of their effort was unknown to the outside world, although the US had detected preparations for a nuclear test site in the Kalahari desert in 1977, [Burrows and Windrem, 1994]).

During the years following the Vela detection unsourced reports periodically surfaced ascribing the test to one of the above possibilities.

As described above, in 1991 Seymour Hersh in The Samson Option quoted a number of source Israeli sources as saying that the test was a joint Israeli and South African operation [Hersh 1991]. If it was an Israeli test, one must speculate exactly how it was done. Hersh claims Israeli navy ships were sent - but Israeli has a small blue water Navy most of which is based in the Mediterranean. It would require a very unusual extended deployment out of the area to reach the Indian Ocean for a test - and the whereabouts of Israel's navy ships around the time of the test would provide a means for evaluating its plausibility. I do not know whether anyone has publicly documented information about this - although I have been told by someone convincingly representing himself as a former South African naval intelligence officer that in fact Israel's ships were not unaccountably absent around this time. Even if so, the possibilities exist of staging the test using commercial ships - operated by Israeli crews possibly under a front company, as an all-airborne operation using air-to-air refueled transports, or by using South African platforms.

Barnaby reports an account from African Educational Fund study that U.S. reconaissance planes operating in the area around the time of the test were intercepted by South African military aircraft and forced them to land. Also cited is circumstantial evidence like a literature search done by the U.S. National Technical Information Service (NTIS) at the request of a South African representative "on nuclear explosions and the seismic detection of nuclear explosions, including the flight plans, predicted orbit plans and operations of the Vela satellite", the only such request ever received [Barnaby 1989; pg. 18-19].

On the other hand Waldo Stumpf, of the Atomic Energy Corporation of South Africa, argues that South Africa did not have the means to conduct a test at that time, but also states that "South Africa was certainly not responsible and was also not involved with anybody else, in this incident [Stumpf 1995].

Prime Minister F.W. de Klerk announced in March 1993 that South Africa had built nuclear weapons, and since that time additional information has periodically come forth. It was revealed that SA had indeed developed and manufactured nuclear weapons (gun-type devices using highly enriched uranium) but no tests (beyond a single zero-yield lab test) were disclosed. The information that was made available tended to disconfirm the hypothesis that South Africa conducted the test. The IAEA has apparently been able to confirm that whatever discrepancies exist between South Africa's HEU inventory and its production records (and some are inevitable) the amount is too small to hide the HEU required for a test. Further, South Africa's accounts of its weapon development activities indicate that its first device was not complete until months after the incident. From documents made available to it, the IAEA believes that the first nuclear device was not manufactured until November. This first device was an experimental one named "Melba" which was said to be kept for research and demonstration purposes throughout the program (which ended in 1989).

In 1994 another claim surfaced:

Contradicting these statements is Commodore Dieter Gerhardt, a convicted Soviet spy who was at the time the commander of the Simonstown naval base near Cape Town. After this release from prison, Gerhardt settled in Switzerland. In Februrary 1994, he told Des Blow of the Johannesburg City Press that the flash was produced by an Israeli-South African test code-named "Operation Phenix". Gerhardt, who said he was not yet ready to reveal the full facts, stated that although he was not directly involved in planning or carrying out the operation, he had learned of it unofficially.

Gerhardt was quoted in the February 20, 1994 City Press: "The explosion was clean and was not supposed to be detected. But they were not as smart as they thought, and the weather changed - so the Americans were able to pick it up."

Gerhardt told me in a March interview that no South African ships were involved in the event. He declined to provide any more details."

[Albright 1994b; pg. 42].

It is impossible to assess whether Dieter Gerhard's account has any basis in fact. Some parts of his statements are interesting. The assertion that "The explosion was clean ..." suggests that it was a neutron bomb (which has been alleged before about this event) which is the only kind of low yield device to have reduced fallout. His statement that weather pattern changes caused its detection is interesting, since conclusive detection by this means has never been made public - the Australian fallout report (and a New Zealand one before it) were both subject to dispute. By his own admission of course, he had no direct connection with the project.

Quite a stir erupted in 1997 when in a 20 April 1997 article that appeared in the Israeli daily newspaper Ha'aretz, South African Deputy Foreign Minister Aziz Pahad was quoted as confirming that the 22 September 1979 flash over the Indian Ocean was indeed from a South African nuclear test. The article said that Israel helped South Africa develop its bomb designs in return for 550 tons of raw uranium and other assistance.

Initially this seemed to conclusively decide the nature of the Vela incident, at least as far as its participants went (the possibility of undisclosed Israeli participation remained). Pahad's office later responded that his remarks were taken out of context. His press secretary told the Albuquerque Journal in an article dated 11 July that Pahad had said only that there was a "strong rumor" that a test had taken place, and that it should be investigated. In other words - Pahad was not commenting on actual knowledge of a test, but was repeating rumors that had been circulating for many years.

Alvarez's point about the absence of evidence being evidence of absence in the case of South Africa today holds much more weight than it did in 1987. South Africa has not only revealed its formerly secret nuclear arsenal and weapons program, but has dismantled both, and the apartheid regime that built them is no more. In the era after the Truth and Reconciliation Commission has unearthed many hidden and unpleasant truths regarding the National Party government (and crimes authored by the same), it is increasingly difficult to believe that all participants in nuclear testing, or those with authoritative knowledge of it, would all still remain silent.

If the test was a South African nuclear device then at least some of the information earlier released by the South African government would have to have been falsified. In particular, the information provided to the IAEA that South Africa did not construct its first nuclear explosive device until November 1979, two months after the mysterious flash, and that the first batch of highly enriched uranium was kept in an experimental device until 1989. IAEA investigations of detailed Valindaba production records, and inventories of its highly enriched uranium, appear to support the claim that any inventory irregularities could not hide enough HEU to fashion a bomb.

Whether the device was South African or Israeli in origin, Gerhard's account (if true) indicates joint Israeli-South African participation in the test. South Africa has now admitted direct Israeli involvement with the South African weapons program, at least to the extent of providing weapon design advice and exchanging material support. Israel had previously been known to provide certain special materials - in particular rather large amounts of tritium - to the weapons program. But nothing has come from the South African government indicating direct Israeli involvement in the testing of a nuclear device, and certainly not the lead role implied by Gerhard's assertion that 'no South African ships were involved'.

http://nuclearweaponarchive.org/Safrica/Vela.html

[Viktor Reznov]

Depois eu sou acusado de ser anti isso, aquilo e sei lá o que mais, mas como não criticar um Estado que foi inventado e se dedica a praticar crimes de toda ordem?

Sequestra seus desafetos onde quer que eles estejam vide Argentina, Itália, usa passaportes falsos de nações amigas para assassinar pessoas em outros países e vem categoricamente mentir, dizendo que não ofereceu armas nucleares a terceiros, diga-se de passagem, terceiros que estavam sob embargo da ONU.

Mais uma prova de que os Estado sionista não respeita o ordenamento jurídico internacional...


Saudações

Você condena o fato de Israel ter sequestrado o nazista Adolf Eichman para julgá-lo pelos seus crimes contra a humanidade? Você por acaso está condenando o julgamento e posterior execução de um nazista? Vem cá.... você ainda se pergunta o porque de eu acusá-lo de ser anti-semita?

[FOXTROT]

Depois eu sou acusado de ser anti isso, aquilo e sei lá o que mais, mas como não criticar um Estado que foi inventado e se dedica a praticar crimes de toda ordem?

Sequestra seus desafetos onde quer que eles estejam vide Argentina, Itália, usa passaportes falsos de nações amigas para assassinar pessoas em outros países e vem categoricamente mentir, dizendo que não ofereceu armas nucleares a terceiros, diga-se de passagem, terceiros que estavam sob embargo da ONU.

Mais uma prova de que os Estado sionista não respeita o ordenamento jurídico internacional...


Saudações

Você condena o fato de Israel ter sequestrado o nazista Adolf Eichman para julgá-lo pelos seus crimes contra a humanidade? Você por acaso está condenando o julgamento e posterior execução de um nazista? Vem cá.... você ainda se pergunta o porque de eu acusá-lo de ser anti-semita?

Em primeiro lugar sou contra a pena de morte, seja quem for o condenado, depois, o que estamos criticando é o "modus operandi" Sionista, não entramos em momento algum no mérito e, por fim, você é livre para pensar o que quiser a meu respeito, mas não o é para me acusar e me ofender, bem como aos demais colegas.

Sempre que quiser debater estou a disposição.
Saudações

[kurgan]

Depois eu sou acusado de ser anti isso, aquilo e sei lá o que mais, mas como não criticar um Estado que foi inventado e se dedica a praticar crimes de toda ordem?

Sequestra seus desafetos onde quer que eles estejam vide Argentina, Itália, usa passaportes falsos de nações amigas para assassinar pessoas em outros países e vem categoricamente mentir, dizendo que não ofereceu armas nucleares a terceiros, diga-se de passagem, terceiros que estavam sob embargo da ONU.

Mais uma prova de que os Estado sionista não respeita o ordenamento jurídico internacional...


Saudações

Você condena o fato de Israel ter sequestrado o nazista Adolf Eichman para julgá-lo pelos seus crimes contra a humanidade? Você por acaso está condenando o julgamento e posterior execução de um nazista? Vem cá.... você ainda se pergunta o porque de eu acusá-lo de ser anti-semita?

Aqui é um lugar de debate e não de acusações.Peço que vá com calma, e respeite a diferentes opiniões no DB.

[rodrigo]

Israel desenvolveu, construiu e testou sua bomba na África do Sul. O frequentador médio daqui do forum sabe disso. O resto é panfletagem. Aliás, eram tão espertalhões que queriam vender uma coisa que praticamente era da África do Sul pros sulafricanos

[Túlio]

De tudo o que li neste tópico só se salvou o post do QUIRON: por que nós não compramos?

[Enlil]

Porque tínhamos uma ditadura das "boas" e q não era tão sanguinária quanto a do Apartheid?...

[guilhermecn]

Ok será divulgada por MP, já somos quantos na C.A.S.F.D.B? Tem o Ilya Ehrenburg que é do clube.

tem gente que vai ter um ataque com a fundação da C.A.S.F.D.B


Saudações

Estou dentro

[Túlio]

Troques 'das buenas' por 'das burras', tri?:

[felipexion]

Israel desenvolveu, construiu e testou sua bomba na África do Sul. O frequentador médio daqui do forum sabe disso. O resto é panfletagem. Aliás, eram tão espertalhões que queriam vender uma coisa que praticamente era da África do Sul pros sulafricanos

Isso até na Wikipedia tem.
Ou vocês acham que Israel ia testar seu "brinquedinho" naquele território menor que o Alagoas?

Este elaborou imediatamente um memorando que assinalava os benefícios que representaria para o país a obtenção dos mísseis Jericho armados com ogivas nucleares.

Já imaginaram um Jericho 3 com ogiva nuclear?
Não é um Scud meia-boca sem precisão.

De tudo o que li neste tópico só se salvou o post do QUIRON: por que nós não compramos?

Por mim comprava e ainda levava desconto por quantidade.

[Francoorp]

Depois eu sou acusado de ser anti isso, aquilo e sei lá o que mais, mas como não criticar um Estado que foi inventado e se dedica a praticar crimes de toda ordem?

Sequestra seus desafetos onde quer que eles estejam vide Argentina, Itália, usa passaportes falsos de nações amigas para assassinar pessoas em outros países e vem categoricamente mentir, dizendo que não ofereceu armas nucleares a terceiros, diga-se de passagem, terceiros que estavam sob embargo da ONU.

Mais uma prova de que os Estado sionista não respeita o ordenamento jurídico internacional...


Saudações

Isso ai FOX, hipocrisia é pouco para descrever a mentalidade dos Yankees !!!

POW eu não sei se entro no Clube... pois não sou anti semita, mas eu critico Israel e a tua posição de vantagem no O.M.

[Túlio]

Ia dizer isso antes: devagar com clubes e PACKS, aqui dá rabo, tri?

[MAZ543]

South Africa Says It Built 6 Atom Bombs

By BILL KELLER,

Published: March 25, 1993

CAPE TOWN, March 24— During a clandestine 15-year program, South Africa built six crude atomic bombs and was at work on a seventh when it decided to dismantle its arsenal, President F. W. de Klerk said today.
Mr. de Klerk told Parliament that the program, one of the nuclear era's most closely guarded secrets, was begun in 1974 because of the apartheid Government's sense of isolation and its fear of Communist designs in the region.
After he took office in 1989, Mr. de Klerk said, the devices were destroyed, the plant for making highly enriched uranium was closed, the uranium fuel was downgraded to make it unsuitable for weapons and the blueprints were shredded.
South Africa became the first and only country to destroy its nuclear arsenal, Mr. de Klerk said, because the cold war was waning and the withdrawal of Cuban troops from nearby Angola eased the sense of menace. Other Motives Seen
In South Africa, where distrust is the legacy of apartheid, and abroad, many suspect the Government was also motivated by a desire to prevent its atomic weapons from someday falling into the hands of a black government.
In his speech to Parliament -- the first admission that South Africa had an atomic weapons program -- Mr. de Klerk said South Africa never tested the bombs, and never intended to use them. Instead, its strategy was that if South Africa came under attack, it would detonate a test device to demonstrate its ability, and threaten to use the weapon unless the United States came to its aid.
Mr. de Klerk withheld a related piece of news: under heavy pressure from the United States, the South African Cabinet agreed today to scrap its plans to build a long-range, solid-fuel rocket, according to a diplomat who was informed of the decision. Foreign Help Denied
The United States argued that the missile, ostensibly intended only for launching satellites, might have been put to military use or sold to other countries that could use it to deliver warheads.
Mr. de Klerk insisted that South Africa devised and built its bombs without help from other countries, contradicting the strongly held suspicion of many experts and diplomats that Israel collaborated in the development of South Africa's nuclear program, particularly in the effort to enrich uranium. In this view, Israel did so in exchange for supplies of South African uranium.
"I wish to emphasize that at no time did South Africa acquire nuclear weapons technology or materials from another country, nor has it provided any to any other country, or cooperated with another country in this regard," Mr. de Klerk said.
South Africa's nuclear program has long been a subject of intrigue and speculation.
South Africa signed the treaty against the spread of nuclear weapons in July 1991, and has opened its nuclear sites since then to inspections by the International Atomic Energy Agency. But the treaty does not require a country to reveal what it may have done in the past, and South Africa had not done so until today. Threat to Technology Sales
Mr. de Klerk said he decided to disclose details of the weapons program to dispel suspicions that South Africa was withholding information. Such suspicions might have threatened South Africa's commercial sales of medical isotopes and non-military nuclear technology.
Although the international agency has not publicly challenged South Africa's veracity, some United States officials and international inspectors have voiced doubts about whether South Africa has fully accounted for its bomb-grade uranium.
Mr. de Klerk said today that the international agency would be given access to all sites and documents pertaining to the program, including previously undisclosed records, and an audit that accounts for "every gram" of nuclear material.
"South Africa's hands are clean and we are concealing nothing," he said, adding he hoped the action "will inspire other countries to take the same steps."
The African National Congress, which is widely expected to lead the first post-apartheid government, said today that it approved of the scrapping of South Africa's atomic weapons, but that it was skeptical of Mr. de Klerk's assertions that all the bomb-grade uranium had been eliminated.
The congress has renounced nuclear weapons and declared its support for the nonproliferation treaty. But congress officials have also said they opposed the destruction of documents that might be used by a future government to track down the full truth about the weapons program.
Government officials said it was only last weekend that the last batch of technical documents relating to the bomb program -- including minutes of meetings where important decisions were made -- were gathered up from state agencies and fed into a shredder. Program Begun by Vorster
Officials said the decision to develop atomic weapons was made by Prime Minister John Vorster at the urging of P. W. Botha, then the Defense Minister. Mr. de Klerk said knowledge of the program was restricted to a handful of top ministers; he learned of the program only after becoming the Cabinet minister for energy in the early 1980's. Mr. Botha served as Prime Minister and later President from 1978 to 1989.
The decision to build seven bombs, the minimum deemed necessary for a "credible deterrent capability," Mr. de Klerk said, was made "against the background of a Soviet expansionist threat in southern Africa" and "South Africa's relative international isolation and the fact that it could not rely on outside assistance, should it be attacked." .
Waldo Stumpff, chief executive of the Atomic Energy Corporation, said South Africa had a bomb "by the end of the 1970's" and, although it was not tested, "there was no reason to believe it would not have worked."
Mr. Stumpff declined to reveal the size of the weapons, but another official said the bombs were large crude devices with the explosive power of 20,000 tons of TNT, about the same as the bombs the United States dropped on Japan in World War II.
The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the bombs were designed to be dropped from British-made Buccaneer bombers. South Africa was thinking of building a nuclear-tipped missile, he said, but the explosive device was too bulky and, in any case, South Africa had not yet developed a missile. Test Site Prepared
Although South Africa sank two 500-foot concrete holes in the Kalahari desert for underground testing, Mr. de Klerk said, no test explosions took place.
In 1979 an American satellite detected a flash over the Indian Ocean that it concluded may have been an atomic test blast. Seymour M. Hersh, in a 1991 book called "The Samson Option," cited a former Israeli official as asserting that Israel and South Africa had cooperated in that test.
Asked about the episode today, Foreign Minister Roelof F. Botha denied that South Africa was involved and said the Government was never able to pin down whether it had been an atomic explosion.
Mr. de Klerk said the Government never gave any serious thought to using its device.
"The strategy was that, if the situation in southern Africa were to deteriorate seriously, a confidential indication of the deterrent capability would be given to one or more of the major powers, for example, the United States, in an attempt to persuade them to intervene," he said.
Another official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said, "The thinking was, if we were attacked from the north, we would have taken one of the devices to the Kalahari and tested it -- then turned to the United States and said, 'We need you to send the Marines.' " Very Tight Security
South African officials marveled today that although more than 1,000 people worked on the atomic weapons program over the years, details of the program never leaked out.
Mr. de Klerk said the cost of the nuclear program, which he estimated at $250 million, was concealed in several budget accounts for nuclear energy development and the military.
Whenever South African officials were questioned, the standard reply was that the Government may have had the technical capability but it did not support the use of nuclear technology for military purposes.
"That reply, to my mind, is neither an admission nor a denial, and therefore it wasn't a lie," Mr. de Klerk said today.

http://www.nytimes.com/1993/03/25/world ... gewanted=1