- LONDON (AP) -- Iran is secretly building up a stock of nuclear and ballistic
missiles that someday may be targeted at the United States, Israeli Prime
Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said.
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- ``Iran is unseen, unperturbed and undisturbed
... building a formidable arsenal of ballistic missiles, actually inter-continental
ballistic missiles'' that initially will reach the rest of the Middle East,
Netanyahu said in a BBC interview Sunday.
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- ``Stage two it would reach Britain and
stage three, believe it or not, they actually plan to reach the eastern
seaboard of the United States, Manhattan,'' Netanyahu told interviewer
David Frost.
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- ``Now this sounds fantastic, but Iran
is, wants to be a world power with the world ideology of fundamentalist
domination, seeing the West as its great enemy and it seeks to have the
weapons to back up that ideology.''
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- ``That is even more dangerous than Saddam
(Hussein of Iraq) because there is a fanaticism, an ideological fanaticism
attached to these, to the acquisition of these weapons,'' Netanyahu said.
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- He said Israel has tried to prevent Iran
from acquiring the technology for such weapons, ``which is coming primarily
from Russia.''
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- The Kremlin has insisted that Russia
is not allowing such a technology transfer.
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- ``I spoke to President (Boris) Yeltsin
about this, President Clinton has taken important initiatives to prevent
Russia from supplying this technology, so has (British) Prime Minister
(Tony) Blair,'' Netanyahu said.
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- Last week, the U.S. House of Representatives
passed a bill, aimed at Russia, that would punish foreign business interests
believed to be helping Iran develop ballistic missiles. President Clinton
has threatened to veto the bill.
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- The United States considers Iran a rogue
state actively promoting terrorism and has tried to isolate it.
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- Copyright 1997 The Associated Press
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