The Business Day today ran a story (no link as yet) headlined “Pretoria Denies Israel’s Iran Claims - SA accused of planning to store parts of Iran`s nuclear weapons programme.”
This is a tad hyperbolic. We don’t really know if Israel actually made these allegations. SA Foreign Affairs Minister Ronnie Mamoepa said that SA had seen reports in an unnamed Israeli newspaper of the allegations from an unnamed Israeli and was going to ask Israel for proof of the claims.
Unnamed newspaper, unnamed sources – doesn’t seem worth paying much attention to this. It may be a case of an SA persecution complex given our open support for Iran to use its nuclear knowledge for peaceful purposes.
SA sits on the 35 member country board of the IAEA and has opposed pressure from the US and EU calling for Iran to be referred back to the UN Security Council for possible sanctions.
Foreign Affairs spokeswoman Nomfanelo Kota said there was no reason for SA to panic about what an Israeli official may have said about the country. She said President Thabo Mbeki met Sharon at the millennium review summit in New York last week and their discussions cleared any issues of concern to the two countries. (Cue the agitated Media Review Network remonstrations over this meeting…)
A related issue caused some controversy last year.
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