United States Arms Sales Israel

The Clinton Administration announced Monday that it has offered to sell Israel 20 top-of-the-line F-15E warplanes, but visiting Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin said he is uncertain whether his government can afford the $1.8-billion price tag. Rabin and Defense Secretary Les Aspin discussed the proposed sale during a three-hour meeting at the Pentagon. The prime minister, who conferred with President Clinton on Friday, is scheduled to leave today for Canada to continue his North American trip.

The Bush Administration will send a team of inspectors to Israel to investigate U.S. intelligence reports that the Israeli government has sold Patriot missiles and other U.S.-developed weapons to China and other countries in violation of American law, the State Department said Monday. The announcement of the inquiry came after Defense Secretary Dick Cheney confronted Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Arens with the intelligence reports.

President Bush announced Saturday that the United States will supply Israel with Apache and Black Hawk helicopters and other American defense equipment that can be kept permanently on Israeli territory as part of a new agreement on military cooperation between the two nations. The new military equipment is meant to demonstrate the Administration's continuing support for Israel following the President's recent decision to sell F-15 warplanes to Saudi Arabia.

The United States lifted a six-year ban on the sale of cluster bombs to Israel after receiving assurances that the weapons would not be used against civilians, a U.S. Embassy official in Jerusalem said. President Reagan decided that the ban was no longer warranted, embassy spokesman Dan Cofman said, adding: "There is no reason to maintain the embargo if the sale of the bombs would increase Israel's security."

The Clinton Administration is considering the transfer of sophisticated new weaponry to Israel as concrete evidence of its pledge to strengthen Israel's security in the wake of its agreement with the Palestine Liberation Organization, U.S. officials said Tuesday.

President Reagan, clarifying his controversial description of former White House aide Oliver L. North as "a hero" last week, said Tuesday that he was referring to North's war record with the Marines in Vietnam. Meeting with a group of journalists, Reagan dodged a follow-up question about whether such heroism had been tarnished by criminal charges of conspiracy, fraud, theft and cover-up in the Iran-Contra scandal.

One day after President Bush unveiled a proposal to restrain the Middle East arms race, Defense Secretary Dick Cheney announced here Thursday that the United States will give Israel $65 million worth of U.S. fighter planes and underwrite most of a new Israeli missile program. Cheney said the United States had agreed to pay 72% of the cost to continue development of Israel's Arrow missile, a system that, like the American Patriot missile, is designed to shoot down short-range ballistic missiles.