Recent newspaper reports accusing Brazil of supplying uranium
to Iraq were based on Brazilian sources and not on Mossad, the Israeli secret service, according to the Brazilian correspondent of The Guardian, a leading British newspaper which had carried the report dismissing any Israeli involvement in the media assertions. The Guardian account was also confirmed by one of Brazil’s leading newspapers, the Estado De Sao Paulo.
The Government Press Office said today that it had received this information directly from both newspapers. The Guardian’s editor cabled Press Office director Ze’ev Hafetz that its Brazilian correspondent had his information from “local, highly reliable sources” which had “nothing to do with the Israeli secret service.”
Hafetz had inquired into the matter because the report that Israel’s Mossad originated the accusation had angered the Brazilian authorities. The Brazilian Ambassador to Israel, Vasco Mariz, was called home last week for “consultations,” a gesture of protest by the government in Brasilia. Israel flatly denied that a Mossad source or any other official here had ever made the accusation against Brazil.
The linkage of Mossad to the accusation first appeared in the Journal Do Brasil in a report from the paper’s Israel correspondent. But Estado De Sao Paulo said the report was from Brazilian sources, Hafetz said today.
The diplomatic tension between Israel and Brazil seemed to be easing and Ambassador Mariz is expected back in Tel Aviv shortly.
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The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
