- WASHINGTON (Narad Online):
Israeli Defence Minister Benjamin Ben Eliezer, while showing Jerusalem's
seriousness about selling the Arrow missiles to India and Turkey, has said
he would ask US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld to allow missiles' export
to Turkey and eventual sales of the anti-missile system to India.
-
- He said he would tell Rumsfeld: "Let us sell 200
anti-missile systems to Turkey and India".
-
- Ben Eliezer, in an interview with the 'Defence News',
said Washington's permission to sell the missiles to the third countries,
including India and Turkey and the US funding for missiles' co-production
in the US, will be among key issues for his discussion with Rumsfeld,
tomorrow
at the Pentagon.
-
- Citing India and Turkey as prospective customers for
the missiles, he said "although, I am certainly taking into
consideration
the US sensitivities with regard to ongoing tensions between India and
Pakistan and Washington's larger interests in the region."
-
- Asked whether Israel's planned export request does not
violate earlier insistence by the US that there would be no third country
sales of the Arrow, Eliezer said "Between friends, nothing is
chutzpah,"
using the Yiddish language term for nerve.
-
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