[Britian has started a arms race in the middle east as other countries seek WMD to deter Israeli nuclear attack-ed]

Britain supplied Israel with a small amount of plutonium in 1966, which officials said could have aided a nuclear arms programme, according to the BBC.

The report, revealed last week on the BBC’s current affairs news programme Newsnight, said that in the 1960’s Britain also made hundreds of shipments of restricted materials to Israel despite a warning from intelligence officials that it could help in the development of a nuclear bomb.

The report was based on secret documents that have been made public under freedom and information laws. According to the BBC, the Labour government, under Prime Minister Harold Wilson, sold Israel lithium compounds which could have enabled Israel to make weapons 10 times as powerful as the atom bomb dropped by the Americans on the Japanese city of Hiroshima in 1945.

Although Israel would have needed almost 5kg of plutonium for an atom bomb, British officials were warned the amount had “significant military value” and could be used in experiments to speed up the development of nuclear arms, according to the BBC report.

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