Prime Minister Levi Eshkol denied vigorously here today that Israel had conducted underground tests of atomic bombs. He voiced his denial in the Knesset (Parliament) in answer to a question on such a report, printed in the Lebanese press, by a parliamentary representative of the Israel Communist Party, Mr. Eshkol said “there is no truth” to that report.
Lebanese newspapers, received here today, claimed that Israel had tested nuclear bombs in the Negev Desert, about 850 yards underground. According to the Lebanese newspapers, the tests had been conducted by Israel on September 26 and October 3, 1966.
(In an interview published in this week’s issue of U.S. News and World Report, a Washington news weekly, Premier Eshkol said “it is not for our purse” to build a nuclear bomb. He said that Israel is “very much worried” over Egypt’s building of missiles and the Egyptian talk about equipping its missiles with atomic chemical warheads. At the same time he declared that Israel feels “quite secure” concerning a possible attack by some of the Arab states, and does not think there will be full-scale war “in the next few years.”)
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