TEL AVIV, June 30 (IslamOnline.net & News Agencies) - Israel decided to cut off ties with the BBC over a repeat broadcast of a documentary named "Israel's Secret Weapons" on Saturday, June 28, which showed pictures of the Dimona nuclear reactor and the biological institute in Nes Tziona, with the narrator saying, "Which country in the Middle East has not declared the nuclear and biological weapons in its possession?", a leading Israeli newspaper reported Sunday, June 29.

The program was broadcast for the first time in March 2003 in Britain, and was rerun Saturday on the BBC World Service that is aired all over the world, Haaretz said.

The boycott decision was made by Israel's public relations forum, made up of representatives from the prime minister's office, the foreign ministry and the Government press office, the paper said.

It was decided that government offices won't assist BBC producers and reporters, that Israeli officials will not give interviews to the British network, and that the Government Press Office will make it difficult for BBC employees to get press cards and work visas in Israel.

Before the broadcast Saturday, Israeli officials tried to pressure the BBC to cancel the broadcast.

The documentary's trailer said that there is no external supervision over Israel, "which is holding in custody for 17 years a man who has leaked its secrets."

Mordechai Va'anunu has been imprisoned for 16 years in solitary confinement for exposing Israel's secret nuclear bomb factory to the world, according to the BBC News Online.

The broadcast deals with Israel's attempts to maintain a policy of ambiguity on its nuclear weapons, through the Va'anunu affair, the trial of Brigadier General Yitzhak Ya'akov and the incidents of cancer among the Dimona nuclear reactor workers.

Danny Seaman, the head of the Government Press Office, has been saying for some time that the BBC has a clear anti-Israel policy, bordering on anti-Semitism.

The documentary came as the United States waged its war on Iraq under the pretext of finding its alleged weapons of mass destruction and stepped up its hostile rhetoric against Iran and North Korea, accusing them of developing nuclear programs, while turning a blind eye to Israel's nuclear activities.