Israel's Vanunu appeals jail term for foreign ties

JERUSALEM, Sep 3 (Reuters) Israeli nuclear whistleblower Mordechai Vanunu is contesting a new jail sentence received for maintaining unauthorised ties with foreigners after he completed an 18-year prison term for treason, his lawyer said today.

Attorney Avigdor Feldman said that Vanunu had filed an appeal yesterday with the district court in Jerusalem, where a lower court sentenced him to six months behind bars in July.

''The immediate significance is that my client will not be going back to jail any time soon,'' Feldman told Reuters, adding that he expected a decision on the appeal within three months.

Vanunu was first imprisoned in 1986 after giving a tell-all interview to a British newspaper about his work as a mid-level technician at Israel's main atomic reactor outside the southern desert town of Dimona. The disclosures all but blew away the iron-clad secrecy around Israel's assumed atomic arsenal.

Vanunu was freed in 2004 but barred indefinitely from leaving Israel by order of defence officials who argued that he had more state secrets to spill. Vanunu, 52, has denied that.

Under the terms of his release, Vanunu was also required to seek official Israeli permission for contacts with foreigners.

Several unauthorised interviews he gave to international media about Israel's nuclear programme landed him back in court.

Israel neither confirms nor denies having West Asia's only atomic weapons under a policy of ''strategic ambiguity'' billed as warding off enemies while avoiding arms races.

The apparent monopoly has long aggrieved Arab states and Israel's arch-foe, Iran, which is now developing a nuclear programme it says is for energy production.

Should Jerusalem District Court find against Vanunu's appeal, he could turn to the Supreme Court, Feldman said. Yet Israel's highest legal panel has already rejected a petition by Vanunu to overturn the travel ban imposed on him by the state.

A Jewish convert to Christianity, Vanunu argues that by refusing international inspections at the Dimona reactor Israel inflames regional tensions and risks a ''second Holocaust''. He has also said that the Jewish state has no right to exist.

Jerusalem District Court had held off implementing July's sentence pending a decision by Vanunu on whether to appeal.

REUTERS GL HS1233