WASHINGTON (Jul. 17)
A majority of the Senate supports a resolution urging the Bush administration to seek the repeal of a U.N. Security Council resolution condemning Israel’s pre-emptive strike against Iraq’s Osirak nuclear reactor in June 1981.
If Israel had not destroyed the reactor, “there is a strong possibility that Saddam Hussein would have had nuclear weapons in hand” when Iraq invaded Kuwait last year, said Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.), who introduced the resolution Wednesday.
The resolution has 53 co-sponsors, but Specter hopes to enlist even more supporters before it comes up for a vote, one of his aides said.
The resolution points out that Israel’s “legitimate and justifiable exercise of self-defense” in 1981 “may have saved the lives of millions of people, including thousands of U.S. servicemen and women deployed in the Persian Gulf region after Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait in 1990.”
A similar resolution was included in the Foreign Aid Authorization Bill adopted last month by the House of Representatives.
