Sharon Tells Cabinet to Keep Quiet on U.S. Plans
The New York Times
October 7, 2002
By JAMES BENNET
The following is an excerpt:
"Even as Mr. Bush has sought in recent days to play up the
imminence and potency of the Iraqi threat, some of Israel's top security officials have
played both down.
Lt. Gen. Moshe Yaalon, Israel's chief of staff, was quoted in the
newspaper Maariv today as telling a trade group in a speech over the weekend,
"I'm not losing any sleep over the Iraqi threat." The reason, he said, was
that the military strength of Israel and Iraq had diverged so sharply in the last
decade.
Israel's chief of military intelligence, Maj. Gen. Aharon Farkash, disputed
contentions that Iraq was 18 months away from nuclear capability. In an
interview on Saturday with Israeli television, he said army intelligence had
concluded that Iraq's time frame was more like four years, and he said
Iran's nuclear threat was as great as Iraq's.
General Farkash also said Iraq had grown militarily weaker since
the Persian Gulf war in 1991 and had not deployed any missiles that could strike
Israel."
nytimes.com
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