U.S. ANGRY OVER ISRAELI UPGRADE FOR CHINATEL AVIV [MENL] -- After nearly two years of rising tension, defense relations between Israel and the United States have been hurled into a crisis.
The issue: Israel's continued defense and security relations with China. The United States has accused Israel of concealing a recent upgrade of a major Israeli weapons system sold to China in the mid-1990s.
Israeli and U.S. officials said the U.S. Defense Department has accused Defense Ministry director-general Amos Yaron of concealing an Israeli upgrade of a major weapons systems sold to China more than a decade ago. They said that for the last four months the Pentagon has refused to meet Yaron and other senior Israeli defense officials.
"There is tension and it has been going on for a year or two," Yuval Steinitz, chairman of the Knesset Foreign Affairs Defense Committee, said. "It has now come out. We are talking about a misunderstanding."