Argentine N-arms ‘soon’

Press, 19 April 1982, Page 8

Argentine N-arms ‘soon’

NZPA London A secret deal between Argentina and West Germany will give Argentina nuclear weapons by next year, according to a 8.8. C. "Newsnight” programme to be shown tomorrow, the "Guardian” has reported. The -“Guardian” says the arrangement involves senior German scientists who were key figures in. the Nazi armaments programme of the Second World War and will give Argentina its own pluto.nium plant. ' • “Members of the West German Government are implicated in a deal which may already have allowed Argentina to extract enough plutonium to make a nuclear bomb.” the paper says. “The programme' shows that the German Government has flouted a number of international agreements about the spread of nuclear weapons. “It may have used Argentina as a base.for nuclear experiments, to get round a 1954 treaty which prevented it making nuclear weapons on its own-territory.” “Admiral Castro’’ Medero. in charge of the Argentine nuclear plant, says on the programme that Argentina would be prepared to sell plutonium to Third World countries," the "Guardian” says. William Epstein, a consultant to the United Nations on nuclear disarmament, says the proposed plutonium sales mean a new round of nuclear proliferation. “It raises the spectre not only of terrorist governments but terrorist groups obtaining nuclear weapons, and then we are really going to be in a mess. It makes the whole future a lot more bleak than it is now,” says Mr Epstein. The “Guardian" goes on to say: “Walter Schnurr, a leading Nazi scientist now living in retirement in Argentina, admits in a frank interview that he went back to Germany after the war at the invitation of the Government to study nuclear energy. “He wanted to give the knowledge to Argentina — 'lt is my second fatherland.”