- BERNE, Switzerland (Reuters)
-- Saudi Arabia accused the international community Tuesday of double standards
over weapons programs in the Middle East, saying nobody questioned Israel
about its nuclear arms.
-
- "There are issues of armaments that are never even
brought to the fore," said Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Saud al-Faisal.
-
- "We know Israel has atomic weapons. They have weapons
of mass destruction....and no question is asked about that," he told
journalists while on a visit to the Swiss capital.
-
- Israel is believed to have around 200 nuclear warheads,
but the Jewish state's policy is not to discuss the issue.
-
- Al-Faisal had been asked about concerns, expressed by
U.S. officials at the weekend, that China was still supplying missiles
to Saudi Arabia that could be used to launch nuclear weapons.
-
- He said that he did not know on what the reports were
based or whether they were "truly representative" of the views
of the U.S. administration.
-
- Saudi Arabia is a key U.S. ally and has cooperated with
Washington's "war on terror." But the relationship has often
been tense, especially since it was revealed that most of the hijackers
who attacked the United States on September 11, 2001 were Saudis.
-
- In the mid-1980s, Riyadh secretly negotiated the $3 billion
purchase of 50 to 60 Chinese CSS-2 missiles, with a range of 4,000 km (2,500
miles), U.S. officials have said.
-
- Riyadh and Beijing said the missiles delivered to Saudi
Arabia had conventional warheads and rebuffed U.S. requests to inspect
them, the officials added.
-
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