A majority of the Senate supports a resolution urging the Bush administration to seek the repeal of a U.N. Security Council resolution condemning Israel’s pre-emptive strike against Iraq’s Osirak nuclear reactor in June 1981.
If Israel had not destroyed the reactor, “there is a strong possibility that Saddam Hussein would have had nuclear weapons in hand” when Iraq invaded Kuwait last year, said Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.), who introduced the resolution Wednesday.
The resolution has 53 co-sponsors, but Specter hopes to enlist even more supporters before it comes up for a vote, one of his aides said.
The resolution points out that Israel’s “legitimate and justifiable exercise of self-defense” in 1981 “may have saved the lives of millions of people, including thousands of U.S. servicemen and women deployed in the Persian Gulf region after Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait in 1990.”
A similar resolution was included in the Foreign Aid Authorization Bill adopted last month by the House of Representatives.
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.
