ISRAEL was tightlipped yesterday 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.

    Officials with inside knowledge of Israel’s intelligence services were not denying it may have had a second spy operating in the United States along with Pollard.

    Ben-Ami, who was released on US$300,000 bail, is a Connecticut-born U.S. citizen who worked as a mechanical engineer at the Army’s Picatinny Arsenal in Dover, New Jersey.

    He was accused of giving Israel, from 1979 to 1985, secrets about nuclear weapons, fighter jets and missiles.

    According to a federal complaint, Ben-Ami reported to the same Israeli handler who was also a main contact for Pollard, a U.S. naval intelligence analyst arrested in 1985 and sentenced in 1987 to life imprisonment for spying for Israel.

    (SD-Agencies)