Britain helped launch Israel's nuke plan

The British Broadcasting Corp. first reported the allegations contained in previously classified documents in August, but Foreign Office Minister Kim Howells swiftly denied the claims to the International Atomic Energy Agency.

Howells' account "simply flies in the face of the known facts, now that we have access to previously classified documents," Menzies Campbell, a lawmaker and foreign affairs spokesman from the small centrist Liberal Democrat party, told the BBC's Newsnight programme late Friday.

Jeremy Corbyn, a lawmaker from the governing Labour Party who wants a committee of lawmakers to investigate, told the program that Howell's statement is "simply untrue."

"Right back to the late 1950s we were a party to the transfer of nuclear technology to Israel," he said. "We were party to the development of a nuclear facility in Israel that could and has been used for the manufacture of nuclear weapons."