Israel Calls Reports That It Has Atomic Bombs ‘speculative, Unauthorized, Unfounded’

Foreign Ministry officials said today that foreign press reports claiming that Israel had atomic bombs were “speculative, unauthorized and unfounded.” The report published in the Montreal Gazette yesterday and re-published today in the London Evening Standard was attributed to an as yet unpublished article in the West German weekly, Der Spiegel. The Foreign Ministry officials said that such reports “crop up from time to time” but “Israel is not a nuclear state.” The Government’s policy has always been that Israel will not be the first nation to introduce nuclear weapons into the Middle East. The Foreign Ministry’s denial corresponded word for word with a denial issued here last January when the National Broadcasting Co. reported that Israel had built or would very shortly build nuclear weapons.