Files Linking UK to «Israel’s» Nuclear Weapons Missed from National Archive

Local Editor

Official documents on Britain's relationship with "Israel", including papers on "military and nuclear collaboration" in the 1970s, disappeared from the National Archives in the last four years.

More than 400 records have gone missing from the repository in Kew, southwest London, including a 1947 letter from Winston Churchill and a Home Office document on the 1910 Suffragettes "disturbances."

The Archives reassured the public it is following a "robust" plan to find the lost files.

The loss of the documents was uncovered following a BBC freedom of information [FoI] request, which found the last recorded knowledge of the 402 historical dossiers was January 2012.

Among them is a Foreign Office file titled ‘Military and nuclear collaboration with "Israel": "Israeli" nuclear armament,' in which the British government notes "Israel's" intention to purchase nuclear weapons.

The document is thought to be linked to a United Nations resolution from 1978 listing the "increasing evidence" of the Middle Eastern country's attempts at acquiring weapons of mass destruction.

However, this is not the only National Archives paper to report on Anglo-"Israeli" nuclear agreements.

A 1958 document, made public by the BBC a decade ago, showed how Britain sold 20 tons of heavy water - one of the ingredients needed to generate plutonium - to "Israel", to be used in the country's top secret Dimona nuclear reactor.

The lost file is believed to have been part of a portfolio of official 1970s documents on arms control and nuclear disarmament.

Source: News Agencies, Edited by website team