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PASTOR GENERAL'S REPORT, JUNE 19, 1981
PAGE 9
Prime Minister Begin certainly views it from the latter perspective, call
ing the raid a "morally supreme act of national self-defense."
Iraq, of course, claims that its reactor complex was intended for peaceful
purposes.
But few nuclear experts who understood the workings of the
Tammuz complex doubt what Baghdad was up to. The fact is, Iraq, which has
ample oil for energy, had made no plans, built up no infrastructure, to
utilize nuclear energy as a power source.
The French, too, were increasingly suspicious.
Former Foreign Minister
Raymond Barre had tried to persuade Iraqi President Saddam Hussein to
switch to a different design for the reactor, and proposed that the Iraqis
use instead a so-called "caramel" fuel, a low-grade French uranium that
could not be used for weapons. Hussein refused; he wanted the good stuff.
The Carter Administration asked the French and Italian governments (the
Italians were building support facilities) to halt their nuclear projects
in Iraq.
Specifically, Washington tried to get Paris to back off from
shipping the first 12-kilogram load of weapon-grade, enriched uranium. The
U.S. request was turned down in both Paris and Rome.
Watching this "business as usual" parade only convinced Mr. Begin there was
only one course of action to take.
Iraq's Hussein helped seal his fate by his own words. In September 1975, a
Lebanese newspaper article quoted Hussein as saying that the nuclear pro
gram was "the first Arab attempt toward nuclear arming, although the
official declared purpose of construction of the reactor is not nuclear
weapons." And after Iranian jets had struck, but not damaged, the reactor
last September 30, Hussein declared that Iran had nothing to fear from
Iraq's nuclear capability, that any weapons would be used against "the
Zionist enemy."
The French, for their part, seem to be glad to be off the hook. The new
government, more sympathetic to Isreael, would probably never have perm
itted the delivery of such a dangerous plant in the first place. Official
French reaction to the raid was therefore remarkably mild. Said Foreign
Minister Claude Cheyson: "I am saddened. This government has a great deal
of sympathy for Israel, but we don't think such action serves the cause of
peace in the area."
Hardly even a slap on the wrist, milder even than
President Reagan's perfunctory criticism (which White House aids say pri
vately should not be taken too literally).
Israel is not out of the woods yet. Archfoe Libya has funneled billions of
dollars into Pakistan to build what its President Muamar Kaddafi calls "the
Islamic bomb."
This weapon could only be months away from completion.
Supposedly it would be available for "export" to Libya or other radical
Arab states.
To the question of how Israel would react if Libya got the bomb, Mr. Begin
bluntly replied to newsmen at an after-raid press conference: "Let us deal
first with that meshuggener (Yiddish for lunatic), Saddam Hussein. With
the other meshuggener (Kaddafi), another time."
The time setting is not yet, but one certainly is reminded of the prophecy
concerning Judah, given in Zechariah 12:6: "On that day I will make the
clans of Judah like a blazing pot in the midst of wood, like a flaming torch