Israel was tightlipped on Wednesday over the arrest in the United States of an 84-year-old American suspected of providing it with U.S. military secrets in the 1980s, a new case that has opened old wounds.
"We received an official update from the Americans. We are following the developments," Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman Arye Mekel said, a day after suspect Ben-Ami Kadish made an initial appearance in a federal court in New York.
The case, linked to the Jonathan Pollard spy scandal that has been an irritant in the U.S.-Israel alliance, raised fears in Israel it would cast a pall over President George W. Bush's visit next month to celebrate the Jewish state's 60th birthday.
But Environment Minister Gideon Ezra, a former senior security official, predicted that Israel's relations with the United States would not suffer.
"Our strategic relationship with the United States is stronger than this," Ezra told Israel Radio.
Officials with inside knowledge in Israel of the country's intelligence services were not denying it may have had a second spy operating in the United States in parallel with Pollard -- but they were insisting such espionage ceased long ago.
Asked about Kadish's charges of spying, Mekel declined to comment on the specific allegations, but said that "since 1985 there have been strict instructions by Israeli prime ministers not to engage in any such activities in the United States."
Mekel added that the instructions "were fully carried out".
Yuval Steinitz, a former chairman of the Israeli parliament's Foreign Affairs and Defence Committee, said that "The Americans know ... that since Pollard was exposed in 1985, Israel doesn't recruit agents or receive classified material (in) the United States".
But Danny Yatom, a legislator and a former head of Israel's Mossad intelligence agency, said the current affair had touched a nerve with Washington.
"I think what primarily bothers the Americans is the feeling that Israel didn't tell them the whole truth two decades ago, in 1985, when the Pollard affair exploded," Yatom told Israeli Army Radio.
"The Americans asked if there are additional people that Israel ran or are running in the United States. The answer, to the best of my knowledge, was always no," Yatom said.
SECRETS
Kadish, who was released on $300,000 bail, is a Connecticut-born U.S. citizen who worked as a mechanical engineer at the Army's Picatinny Arsenal in Dover, New Jersey.
He was accused of giving Israel secrets, from 1979 to 1985, about nuclear weapons, fighter jets and missiles.
According to a federal complaint, Kadish reported to the same Israeli handler who was a main contact for Pollard, a U.S. naval intelligence analyst arrested in 1985 and sentenced in 1987 to life imprisonment for spying for Israel.
Israel has said Pollard was recruited in a rogue operation by the since-disbanded Bureau of Scientific Relations, then headed by Rafi Eitan, now pensioners minister.
U.S. authorities did not disclose what led to their discovery of Kadish's suspected espionage.
But they said he had remained in contact with his alleged handler, who left the United States when Pollard was detained and has not returned.
"If what has been reported is true, and it appears it is true, and Ben-Ami Kadish kept in touch with what the Americans described as his old handler in Israel, I can call it unnecessary stupidity," Yatom said.
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