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

DATE: SATURDAY, November 19, 1994                   TAG: 9411210036
SECTION: NATL/INTL                    PAGE: A7   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: ASSOCIATED PRESS
DATELINE: LONDON                                 LENGTH: Medium

ISRAEL A NUCLEAR POWER?

The report in the magazine's November issue said high-resolution photographs taken over five years make it possible to follow Israel's nuclear trail ``from nuclear reactor to final product.''

The Israeli government neither confirms nor denies having nuclear weapons and has tried to keep the country's nuclear program secret. It has not signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, which would open its facilities to international inspection.

The only authoritative report on Israel's nuclear program came in 1987 from Mordechai Vanunu, an Israeli nuclear technician who worked at the Dimona nuclear facility in the Negev desert.

Vanunu told a London newspaper that Dimona processed enough plutonium to have produced as many as 200 atomic weapons, which would make Israel the world's sixth-largest nuclear power. A year later, he was convicted at a secret trial on espionage and treason charges. He is still in prison.

The Jane's report, by American military writer Harold Hough, said Israel apparently considers its nuclear arsenal a weapon of last resort, not a first-strike option.

Several military analysts who examined the eight Russian and French commercial satellite photos printed in the magazine said it was impossible to confirm the article's detailed conclusions without access to additional classified information.

Robert Hall, the magazine's editor, said Hough, of Tucson, Ariz., had ``background detail to make the assessments he has.''

According to the Jane's report:

Weapons-grade plutonium is produced at the Dimona facility.

Nuclear weapons are designed at the Soreq research center, south of Tel Aviv, which has an American-built research reactor.

Nuclear-capable missiles are tested at the Palmikim Missile Test Range on the Mediterranean Sea.

Nuclear-tipped Jericho II missiles are built in a factory at Be'er Yakov, west of Jerusalem.

A nuclear missile base at Kefar Zekharya, in the Judean hills west of Jerusalem, has 50 underground bunkers housing at least 50 Jericho II missiles with nuclear warheads.

Nuclear weapons are assembled and dismantled at Yodefat, east of Haifa in the Galilee.

Tactical nuclear weapons are stored near Eilabun in eastern Galilee.