U.S. and Israeli officials have declined comment on a CBS News report that the United States has promised to give Israel the electronic airplane identification codes it needs before it can launch an air strike on Iraqi targets.
In Israel, military and diplomatic commentators dismissed the CBS report as false. They said Defense Minister Moshe Arens had not requested the radar codes during his meetings Monday with President Bush, Defense Secretary Dick Cheney and Secretary of State James Baker.
Malcolm Hoenlein, executive director of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, also said the issue was “not discussed” and “not resolved” during the Arens visit. “Our understanding is that the CBS reports were wrong,” he said.
But a reliable pro-Israel lobbyist here said Wednesday that the Pentagon has promised to provide the Identification Friend or Foe codes to Israel if Iraq attacks the Jewish state with unconventional weapons.
The electronic recognition codes, which are changed daily, are needed by the Israeli air force to distinguish allied aircraft from Iraqi planes. Without them, Israeli jets the run risk of accidentally shooting down “friendly” aircraft or mistaking enemy planes for allied ones.
U.S. officials “understand that if there is a gas bombing, Israel is going to go” launch an attack, regardless of whether or not it has the codes, the pro-Israel lobbyist said.
ISRAEL THINKS IT CAN DO IT BETTER
Bombings that would provoke swift Israeli retaliation include any Iraqi Scud missile attack with warheads containing biological, chemical or nuclear warheads, he said.
It is known that Iraq has chemical weapons, but U.S. officials have questioned whether Iraq is capable of mounting chemical warheads on its modified Scud missiles.
The CBS News report Tuesday said that the United States had agreed to provide the airline codes to Israel, but only after the allied forces begin a land invasion of Kuwait. During that phase of the war, allied bombers are expected to hit targets mainly in Kuwait, rather than in western Iraq, where Israeli planes would strike.
Capt. Sig Adams, a Pentagon spokesman, refused to comment on the report, except to say that since it was by CBS State Department correspondent Bill Plante, “it must have been a State Department source” who provided the information.
While the pro-Israel lobbyist and Hoenlein differed on whether the airline codes were requested, they seemed to agree Arens told senior U.S. officials Israel believes it is better able than the allied forces to destroy Iraq’s Scud launchers.
“It may very well be that they discussed that,” Hoenlein said. U.S. officials are “very much aware of Israel’s feelings in that regard. I assume at some point that matter has come up.”
When Arens made the comment about Israel’s perceived superiority in destroying Iraqi Scuds, “there was nothing specifically stated from the U.S. side,” the lobbyist reported.
(JTA correspondent Hugh Orgel in Tel Aviv contributed to this report.)
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