Congressmen Tell Senate Committee Raid on Iraqi Reactor Has Helped Focus on Need for Non-proliferati

Three members of the House Foreign Affairs Committee said today that the June 7 Israeli raid destroying the Iraqi nuclear reactor has served to focus attention on the need for nuclear non-proliferation throughout the world.

This was also the consensus of members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee before whom the three Congressmen testified this morning. Sen Rudy Boschwitz (R. Minn.), who conducted the Senate Committee’s third hearing on the raid, said that once the “pious hypocrisy” over the Israeli raid was disposed of, Israel’s action can focus attention on non-proliferation.

Rep. Jonathan Bingham (D. NY) told the Senate committee that the Administration testimony before the House committee served to “obfuscate rather than clarify the nature of the Iraqui nuclear threat.”

He said for the past years, officials of the Carter and Reagan Administrations had told him that “the diversified and sophisticated nuclear equipment, training, and materials which Iraq has acquired only make sense in terms of a desire to achieve nuclear weapons capabilities.”

But, Bingham said, the Iraqi nuclear progress was never taken seriously by the U.S. He said Israel “had every reason to be alarmed” by the Iraqi program but the U.S. failed “to appreciate how seriously Israel viewed the security threat and how Israel might act to defend its perceived self-interest.”

BINGHAM ASKS FIRM U.S. ACTION

Bingham called on the Reagan Administration to “publicly articulate a firm commitment to direct substantial U.S. resources to preventing the spread of nuclear weapons and of the capability to manufacture nuclear weapons.” Rep. Edward Markey (D. Mass.) also called on the President to strengthen U.S. nonproliferation efforts. “The major threat in the world today is not the arms race between the United States and the Soviet Union,” Markey said. “It is the threat of nuclear weapons under the guise of commercial nuclear power technology to unstable nations and eventually to terrorist groups.”

Rep. Tom Lantos (D. Calif.) also spoke of the danger of nuclear terrorism. “A nuclear bomb in the hands of Muammar Qaddafi (of Libya) or the Ayatolah Khomeni (of Iran) is more likely to be used than the same weapons in the hands of the major powers,” Lantos said.

Lantos warned that the United States must not “delude” itself that only Israel is endangered by nuclear terrorism. “A decade ago many thought that only Israeli civilians would be the victims of conventional terrorism,” he said. “Today the murder of innocent men, women and children goes on throughout the world. The terrorist networks which spread the arms and tactics first used against the Israelis will not shrink from sharing whatever other weapons they are able to acquire.”

Markey charged that the Reagan Administration is signaling to the world to go ahead and construct nuclear bombs by its recent renewal of military aid to Pakistan “which, if anything, has been more overt than Iraq in its organized efforts to obtain a nuclear bomb.”

Sen. Joseph Biden (D. Del.) noted the testimony yesterday of Undersecretary of State James Buckley that “one has to make a distinction between the nuclear option and nuclear weapons.” Buckley, who negotiated the renewed $3 billion economic and military aid agreement with Pakistan said that he was “assured by the Ministers and by the President (of Pakistan) himself that it was not the intention of the Pakistan government to develop nuclear weapons.” Biden said that these comments leave him with the belief that the Administration is “not taking non-proliferation seriously.”