Documents recently declassified by the South African government show Israel's attempts to sell nuclear weapons to apatheid regime in the '70s, the first documentary proof that Israel has nukes, the Guardian reported.
The papers which are records of meetings between then South African Defence Minister PW Botha and Israeli Defence Minister Shimon Peres show that South Africa wanted to procure warhaeads in 'three sizes.' The two countries also signed a military cooperation agreement with a clause that thsi agreement be a secret.
These documents were uncovered by Sasha Polakow Suransky, who was researching a book on the close relationship between Israel and South Africa. Israel has always maintained an ambiguity overs its nuclear weapons, neither confirming nor denying the existence of its nuclear arsenal.
The Israeli authorities also tried to stop the South African government from declassifying the documents as they could be potentially embarassing.
Suransky's book: The Unspoken Alliance: Israel's secret alliance with apartheid South Africa claims that the Israelis were willing to offer nuclear, biological and chemical payloads. The deal eventually fell through because of the price and the fact that any such transaction would require the assent of the Israeli prime minister. South Africa eventually built its own nuclear bombs and later provided a bulk of the uranium required for the Israeli weapons programme.
This first revelation of Israel's nuclear programme had come from Mordechai Vanunu, who in 1986 had told a British newspaper about Israel's nuclear plant at Dimona.
Before the meeting, Peres and Botha signed an agreement called Secment. The deal was so secret that it included a denial of its own existence: "It is hereby expressly agreed that the very existence of this agreement... shall be secret and shall not be disclosed by either party". The agreement also said that neither party could unilaterally renounce it.
South Africa's African National Congress government was not too keen to protect the apatheid era regime's allies.
