Sen. Stuart Symington (D.Mo.) declared in a nationwide telecast yesterday that President Nixon’s “offer of a large nuclear reactor to Egypt could be a serious diplomatic error.” He warned that “this idea of U.S. proliferating weapons of all kinds all over the world is a great mistake.”
There is a “possibility,” he said, that Congress might reject the President’s plan to give Egypt the nuclear reactor, “but we would like to hear all the evidence.” Congress is expected to consider the agreements made by President Nixon with Israel and Egypt next week. Provisional contracts were signed last week for U.S. deliveries of nuclear fuel to Egypt in Feb. 1980 and to Israel 11 months later.
Speaking on ABC’s “Issues and Answers” program Symington also said. “To be frank, I don’t think he (Nixon) has offered the Israelis anything that they did not have at least in theory. I don’t know what his plans are in the way of giving them enriched uranium,” Symington is a member of the Senate Armed Services and Foreign Relations Committees and the Joint Committee on Atomic Energy. (By Joseph Polakoff)
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