S. Africa Says It Once Built Atomic Bombs

President Frederik W. de Klerk confirmed long-held suspicions about South Africa’s nuclear capability Wednesday, revealing that the white-minority government had built six nuclear bombs since the late 1970s but, three years ago, had destroyed them along with all their blueprints.

“This country will never be able to build a nuclear device again,” De Klerk said after making his announcement to a joint session of Parliament in Cape Town. “South Africa is adhering strictly to the requirements of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, and it will continue to do so.”

De Klerk added that the government now will give international inspectors “full access to the facilities and the records of facilities” it once used to make the weapons.

“South Africa’s hands are clean, and we are concealing nothing,” he told Parliament.

The president declined to specify the size of the weapons, but other government officials said each was a 20-kiloton bomb, the same size as the U.S. atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima.

De Klerk said he decided to come clean about the nuclear weapons program to end worldwide suspicion, improve South Africa’s foreign relations and open the way for international exchanges of commercial nuclear technology.

It marked the first time that a country has voluntarily acknowledged dismantling its nuclear weapons capability. And it followed years of vehement government denials that this nation possessed nuclear weapons.

De Klerk said previous denials were designed to confuse the world.

“It wasn’t a lie,” he insisted. “But our objective was to make people uncertain whether we had it or not . . . as a deterrent.”

The U.S. State Department welcomed the South African announcement, apparently accepting De Klerk’s assurance that his country had destroyed its nuclear weapons capability.

“The candid revelation . . . and full cooperation with the International Atomic Energy Agency are major positive steps to demonstrate to the international community that South Africa has truly dismantled its nuclear weapons capability and is complying” with the non-proliferation treaty, a department official said in Washington.

The International Atomic Energy Agency indicated that it also is satisfied that South Africa now is complying fully with the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and a separate Safeguards Agreement that it signed with the Vienna-based agency in 1991.

The African National Congress, the primary black opposition group in South Africa, welcomed De Klerk’s statement. But it said it would not believe that South Africa’s “hands are clean” until the government has made a “full disclosure of all details of the weapons program and its dismantling, the stockpile of weapons-grade uranium and of international cooperation.”

De Klerk said South Africa had never exchanged nuclear weapons technology or materials with any other country, and government officials specifically denied reported exchanges with Israel.

“What we did, we did on our own,” said Foreign Minister Roelof F. (Pik) Botha. “And we destroyed it.”

South Africa began its $250-million nuclear weapons program in 1974 under orders from then-Prime Minister John Vorster, and its first nuclear fission device was ready for testing by the late 1970s. A testing ground was prepared in the Kalahari Desert, but De Klerk said the country never conducted a nuclear test.

Asked if the bombs would have worked, Tielman de Waal, head of the government-owned arms maker Armscor, said, “Never has such a device been built that did not work.”

For years, South Africa’s nuclear capability remained a secret known only to the head of state, the project workers and a few Cabinet ministers.

“The amazing thing is that over 1,000 people worked on the project over the years and not a single one said a word,” De Waal said.

De Klerk said he learned of the existence of the bombs in the early 1980s, when he assumed responsibility for energy affairs in President Pieter W. Botha’s government.

The original plan called for the construction of seven bombs, considered the minimum required for testing, as protection against Soviet expansion in southern Africa and South Africa’s growing isolation.

“It was never the intention to use the devices,” De Klerk said. “From the outset, the emphasis was on deterrence.”

South Africa’s strategy was to give one or more of the world powers, such as the United States, a confidential indication of its capability “if the situation in southern Africa were to deteriorate seriously,” De Klerk said.

By 1989, when De Klerk became president, six bombs had been manufactured. The president said he decided then, with the end of the Cold War and the withdrawal of 50,000 Cuban troops from Angola, that it was time to end the country’s confrontational posture.

At the same time, De Klerk also launched reforms to repeal apartheid and eventually to extend voting rights to the black majority. He denied Wednesday that his decision to dismantle the nuclear weapons reflected concern over the prospect of a future black-controlled government.

Early in 1990, on De Klerk’s orders, the bombs were dismantled and destroyed, all nuclear material was recast and returned to South Africa’s Atomic Energy Corp. for storage and the production facilities were decontaminated.

A South African nuclear physics professor was appointed to oversee the process, reporting directly to De Klerk.

When the project had been completed, in mid-1991, South Africa signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, promising to observe its prohibitions on nuclear weapons manufacture and to open its nuclear facilities to inspection.

South Africa was not required to disclose its previous weapons program and, at the time, international inspectors were not aware of it.

The investment in uranium enrichment technology was not wasted, De Klerk assured Parliament. It currently is used to produce radioactive isotopes for medical purposes and fuel for one nuclear power plant in South Africa, and it “will contribute significantly to the ultimate success of our peaceful commercialization program,” De Klerk said.

Times staff writer Norman Kempster, in Washington, contributed to this report.