British Foreign Office avoids angering Israel over nukes

The only Middle Eastern nation with nuclear weapons is Israel. Israel refuses to sign the NPT.
Yet the "real" threat is imaginary nukes in Iraq and Iran. Iran, at least, signed the NPT.
These are the facts that had to be left out of a British report, lest Israel get annoyed.

story from The Daily Star

UK 'suppressed' mention of Israeli nuclear arsenal in Iraq arms dossier

Compiled by Daily Star staff
Friday, February 22, 2008

LONDON: An early draft of a pre-war British weapons dossier on Iraq included concerns over Israel's nuclear capability, but the government fought to suppress the reference before publication, Britain's Guardian newspaper reported on Thursday. The daily said the Foreign Office convinced a tribunal to keep secret the handwritten mention of Israel in the margin of the dossier, which was drawn up to support the decision to go to war in Iraq.

The reference, suggesting Israel had disregarded the will of the United Nations like Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein in pursuit of weapons of mass destruction, was removed before the draft was released this week under Britain's Freedom of Information Act. Israel, seen as a key British government ally, is thought to have the Middle East's only atomic arsenal.

In a witness statement to the Information Tribunal, seen by The Guardian, a senior Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) official warned that any candid reference to Israel's nuclear arsenal would seriously damage bilateral relations.

"I interpret this note to indicate that the person who wrote it believes that Israel has flouted the United Nations' authority in a manner similar to that of the Iraqi regime of Saddam Hussein," the official said, according to The Guardian.

"Unfortunately, there is a perception already in Israel that parts of the FCO are prejudiced against the country," Foreign Office official Neil Wigan was quoted as saying.

He argued that the reference scrawled on the draft dossier "would therefore confirm this pre-existing suspicion and would increase the damage."

When asked about the Guardian report, a Foreign Office spokeswoman told Reuters: "We don't comment on leaked documents."

A spokeswoman for Premier Gordon Brown would not comment on the document itself, but said: "Our position in terms of encouraging all signatories of the [nuclear] Non-Proliferation Treaty [NPT] to abide by that remains the same." Israel, however, is not party to the treaty.

"But we also recognize Israel's position needs to be looked at in a regional context, bearing in mind they have neighbors such as Iran who deny the right of Israel to exist," she added.

Succumbing to three years of pressure from freedom of information campaigners, London released the once-secret draft document on Monday.

The 32-page dossier, written by a former communications director at the Foreign Office, cites intelligence sources saying Iraq had stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons and could easily use them since it had done so before - during a domestic insurrection and in the devastating Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s.

The document, amended in the margins, makes no mention of Iraq being capable of launching weapons of mass destruction within 45 minutes, a false claim later used in another government dossier to make the case for going to war. - Reuters