Natan Sharansky has made it clear that an expansion of Israeli-Russian ties depends on Moscow ending any assistance to Iran’s ballistic missiles and nuclear weapons programs.
The former Prisoner of Zion, who is currently Israel’s trade and industry minister, conveyed that message during his two-day visit to the Russian capital this week.
The visit came as Russian President Boris Yeltsin reshuffled his Cabinet in a move that some saw as an indication of a possible shift in Moscow’s sales of nuclear technology to Iran. It also came two weeks after officials with the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, the main umbrella group of American Jewish organizations, pressed Moscow on the Iran issue.
While in Moscow, Sharansky held talks with top-ranking Russian officials, including Prime Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin, Foreign Minister Yevgeny Primakov and Yuri Koptev, who is in charge of the Russian Space Agency.
“We discussed the problems of Iraq, of the Middle East, but first of all the situation with Iran and our Israeli concern about possible development of weapons of mass destruction,” Sharansky said of his Monday negotiations with Chernomyrdin.
Russia is reportedly involved in the construction of an Iranian nuclear power plant, which Israel says might help Iran advance its military nuclear program.
Earlier this year, the Kremlin announced that it has stopped supplying missile technology to Iran, and officials have said they have thwarted plans of some Russian companies to provide the Islamic republic with technology that can have military use.
At a news conference here Tuesday, Sharansky said, “There is absolutely no evidence that the Russian government is deliberately promoting” Iran’s missile program, but he added that “the knowledge of Russian scientists, technologies of Russian companies are being used in Iran.”
He urged the Yeltsin government to do “everything possible to prevent the leak” of missile technology from Russia to Iran.
Sharansky also reportedly expressed Israel’s concern over Moscow’s apparent desire to seek increased relations with some Muslim states.
A high-ranking Russian delegation visited Damascus a week ago to negotiate Russian arms sales to Syria. Also last week, Iranian foreign minister paid a visit to Moscow, and Russia’s deputy prime minister, Vladimir Bulgak, is currently holding talks in Tehran.
On Monday, Yeltsin dismissed his atomic energy minister, Viktor Mikhailov, one of his longest-serving Cabinet members. Mikhailov has been known as a major supporter of nuclear cooperation with Iran.
One leading Russian expert said Mikhailov had implemented “his own personal policy,” particularly regarding sales of nuclear technology to Iran.
At the end of Sharansky’s stay in Moscow — the second since his release from a Soviet labor camp in a 1986 East-West prisoner exchange — he was expected to visit the Moscow Institute for Physics and Technology, the school from which he graduated 30 years ago.
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