A Patriot in Beijing?

When the U.S. gave Patriot missile batteries to Israel to combat the Iraqi Scuds raining down on civilians during the gulf war, Washington forbade Jerusalem to export the technology. Now a U.S. intelligence report suggests that Israel may have supplied China with secrets of the Patriot. Israeli officials deny the charge, but the controversy has roiled relations with the U.S., already strained by American demands that the Shamir government stop building settlements in the occupied territories exchange for $10 billion in loan guarantees. The Wall Street Journal fueled the controversy by reporting that Israel is also suspected of having exported antitank missiles to South Africa as well as cluster bombs to Ethiopia and Chile.

"This is complete nonsense, absolute lies," Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir declared last week to the Israeli newspaper Yediot Aharonoth. Dore Gold of the Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies at Tel Aviv University voiced a suspicion common in Israel: "What we're witnessing is a kind of psychological warfare between allies, particularly because Washington faced a very embarrassing moment after its failure to grab the Scud ship." But questions will linger because Israel has sold enough military technology to China in the past to make the latest charges seem plausible.