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UK Admits Israel Has Nuclear Weapons

LONDON, Nov. 20--Former British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw has become
the
first member of the British cabinet to go on public record and formally
admit
that the Zionist regime has an arsenal of nuclear weapons.

"I don't think it is a secret. I have never pretended that they haven't
got
nuclear weapons, certainly they have got a nuclear arsenal and it is a
working
assumption," said Straw.

The House of Commons leader made the admission after he was challenged
about
the government's failure to acknowledge let alone deal with Tel Aviv's
nuclear
weapons in an interview with the Muslim News, to be published Friday.

When he was foreign secretary, Straw insisted that he had talked about
Israel's illegal capability, which Britain helped to create nearly 50
years ago, in
the same breath as India and Pakistan.

"If you want a nuclear free Middle East, which I do, you don't get
proliferation, you stop proliferation, and then you ultimately deal
with the fact that
Israel has nuclear weapons, and I'm on record about that a lot," he
said.

In his interview, the House of Commons leader also said that he
accepted that
there was a continuing blaring injustice over Israel's 50-year
occupation of
Palestine.

"I have always thought, the glaring injustice of the Middle East crisis
--
Israel and Palestine -- has caused a great anger among Muslims," he
said.

"Resolving the Israel-Palestine situation is one of the most urgent
priorities of all," Straw said, but like Prime Minister Tony Blair, he
denied that
Britain's foreign policy had increased the threat of terrorism in the
UK.

He admitted that the situation in Iraq following the joint US-UK
invasion was
dire, but insisted that it cannot be the motivation for Bin Ladin and
his
group because they were going before that.

The former foreign secretary, who was replaced in May, also
acknowledged that
with the benefit of hindsight there are plenty of things one could have
done
better in Iraq.

"The preparations for the post war situation in Iraq were not nearly as
good
as they should have been," he said adding that there was time lost in
the very
crucial three months between the fall of Saddam.

"It was partly lost because in the United States a decision was made
that the
lead over reconstruction of the country should be given to the
Department of
Defense rather than to the State Department, and that was a great
error,"
Straw said.

This, he suggested, was one of the things which the British government
would
have done differently in Iraq, but said that the UK had only limited
influence
over that rather than a huge influence.