Top secret papers from the apartheid era show that Israel offered to sell nuclear warheads to South Africa in the mid-1970s, according to a British newspaper.
The South African documents provide the first documentary evidence that Israel has nuclear weapons, The Guardian reported Monday.
The documents were discovered by American scholar Sasha Polakow-Suransky, while researching the book "The Unspoken Alliance: Israel's secret alliance with apartheid South Africa," which was published in the United States this week.
The documents include minutes of meetings between senior officials of Israel and South Africa, and show that then-South African Defense Minister P.W. Botha asked then-Israeli Defense Minister Shimon Peres for warheads. Peres, now president of Israel, told Botha that "the correct payload was available in three sizes." The "three sizes" are believed to refer to conventional, chemical and nuclear weapons, according to The Guardian.
Botha reportedly did not purchase the weapons, in part because they were too expensive. South Africa eventually built its own nuclear bombs possibly with Israeli assistance, according to the newspaper.
Israel pressured the current South African government not to declassify the documents, The Guardian reported.
"There exists no basis in reality for the claims published this morning by The Guardian that in 1975 Israel negotiated with South Africa the exchange of nuclear weapons. Unfortunately, The Guardian elected to write its piece based on the selective interpretation of South African documents and not on concrete facts," said a statement released by Peres' office Monday. "Israel has never negotiated the exchange of nuclear weapons with South Africa. There exists no Israeli document or Israeli signature on a document that such negotiations took place.
"The Office of the President regrets The Guardian’s decision to publish such an article without requesting comment from any Israeli officials," the statement said.