Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: WEDNESDAY, May 9, 1990                   TAG: 9005090016
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A5   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: The Baltimore Sun
DATELINE: JERUSALEM                                LENGTH: Medium

ISRAEL BELIEVES NUCLEAR CLAIMS

"Israel is taking what he says at face value," said Yossi Amihud, the foreign ministry spokesman. "The man is talking of destroying Israel, of using non-conventional arms, and he shouldn't get away with it."

"We see in it something which we think all the free countries should really condemn," Amihud said.

At the State Department in Washington, a spokesman said, "We are trying to find out more information. The only thing we have so far is the one press report. We are waiting to hear from the embassy in Baghdad. So far it is unclear whether Iraq actually has a nuclear trigger that somehow slipped through the net or whether it is a local prototype. Until we have more information we don't want to react."

Israel has in general reacted cautiously to the series of Iraqi proclamations that began in March when Hussein pledged to use chemical weapons to destroy half of Israel in retaliation for any Israeli attack.

Officials in Jerusalem have been consistent in demanding that other nations take strong but unspecified measures against Baghdad, and have phrased the demand to allow it to be interpreted as a warning that Israel could become impatient and act on its own.

Gerald Steinberg, a security specialist at Hebrew University, predicted before Hussein's latest announcement that Israel would eventually take military action.

If Iraq continued to develop chemical or nuclear weapons, Steinberg said, Israel could feel forced to respond "in six months, or a year, or two years, but not much more than that."