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JERUSALEM-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."The Americans know ... that since Pollard was exposed in 1985, Israel doesn't recruit agents or receive classified material in the United States," said Yuval Steinitz, a former chairman of the Israeli parliament's Foreign Affairs and Defence Committee.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.To read more go to:
As in the days of Noah...
