Israelis Testing A-Bombs, Soviet News Item Claims

A Soviet news report excerpted in a Beirut newspaper today accuses Israel of carrying out underground atomic tests and of possessing 40 nuclear warheads with missiles to carry them.

The report came in an Arabic-language article distributed in Beirut by the Soviet’s Union’s state-run Novosti press agency. Excerpts were reproduced by the Middle East Reporter, a Beirut-based daily news digest.

Novosti did not cite a source for its report. There was no immediate Israeli comment. In the past, Israel has refused to confirm or deny whether it has nuclear weapons.

The article said, “Israel has decided to deploy a tactical nuclear weapon less costly than the American Pershing missile, and increased the number of warheads to 40 in 1985.

“Israel has also been escalating its nuclear might by undertaking underground nuclear tests in the Negev desert.”

Israel has its largest nuclear reactor in the Negev, which is in southern Israel adjacent to Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula.

The Novosti report coincided with an officially reported exchange of letters between Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev and Syrian President Hafez Assad over Syria’s recent deployment of high-altitude surface-to-air missiles along its border with Lebanon.

Israel considers the newly installed Soviet-supplied SAM-2 batteries a threat to its reconnaissance flights over Lebanon to monitor military and guerrilla activity.

Syria, which is Moscow’s main Middle East ally, rejected a U.S. plea two weeks ago to remove the missiles and defended its right to deploy “any kind of weapons necessary to its self-defense” on its own territory.

Gorbachev’s message was delivered to Assad on Tuesday, Syria’s state radio reported. It did not disclose the contents of the message nor the reply Assad sent.

But several Beirut newspapers quoted unidentified “observers in Damascus” as saying the exchange of messages dealt with the Syrian-Israeli “missile confrontation.”