West Germany secretly helped and funded Israel with its development of nuclear weapons in the 1960s, a report says.

The government of former German Chancellor Konrad Adenauer clandestinely channeled hundreds of millions of dollars into Israel's nuclear program, said a report published in the German daily Die Welt on Tuesday.

According to the report, the informal deal was made when former Israeli President Shimon Peres was in charge of the regime's nuclear weapons project.

On May 14, 1960, Adenauer met with the then-Israeli prime minister, David Ben-Gurion, in New York’s Waldorf Astoria hotel, where it was agreed that a total of 500 million dollars be given to Israel under the guise of a 10-year loan for the development of the Dimona nuclear facility in the Negev desert.

Israel’s Dimona nuclear plant (DPA image)

The US recently released documentation from its 1987 assessment of Israel’s nuclear weapons capabilities, following a Freedom of Information Act request.

The declassified documents paralleled Israel’s nuclear research laboratories to US nuclear facilities known to carry out weapons research.

The Soreq and Dimona nuclear facilities “are the equivalent of our Los Alamos, Lawrence Livermore and Oak Ridge National Laboratories,” it read.

The Israeli regime, widely believed to possess between 200 to 400 nuclear warheads in its arsenals, refuses to either allow inspections of its nuclear facilities or join the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.

SRK/MHB/AS