UNITED NATIONS, May 12: A former Pentagon official and whistle-blower, Daniel Ellesberg, said on Wednesday that Israel could have close to 400 nuclear weapons at present. “That’s more than Britain, China, India and Pakistan, and probably more than France,” said Mr Ellesberg at a press briefing before he addressed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty conference here.

He observed that Israeli Technician Mordechai Vanunu revealed in 1986 that Israel had about 200 nuclear weapons. Mr Vanunu has estimated that at the same rate of production Israel had when he left Dimona in 1985, the country should have close to 400 weapons today, Mr Ellsberg said.

Mr Ellsberg, who spoke on behalf of the non-profit Nuclear Age Peace Foundation, which promotes the abolition of nuclear weapons, said Israel today was probably the third or fourth-largest nuclear state — behind the United States and Russia, and possibly France.

Israel neither acknowledges nor denies having a nuclear weapons programme, following a policy of nuclear ambiguity.

Mr Ellsberg was of the opinion that Mr Vanunu should be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for revealing Israel’s nuclear arsenal and be allowed to travel the world to promote the abolition of nuclear weapons.

Mr Ellsberg, who said he recently spent five days with Mr Vanunu in Israel, dismissed the government’s claim that Mr Vanunu still had secrets that could endanger national security as ‘absurd’.

“It’s clearly an attempt to prolong his sentence indefinitely, sending him back to prison for years,” Mr Ellsberg said.

“The message this sends to potential Vanunus in other states is very clear, and the question at this conference is whether the nations of the world should encourage or strongly protest that message,” he said.

Mr Ellsberg said that if an Indian technician had revealed the country’s plan for a nuclear test, international pressure might have prevented it — and “how much better India, Pakistan and the world would be.”