JERUSALEM -- Israel's jailed nuclear whistle-blower, Mordechai Vanunu, told security officials in a taped interrogation released yesterday he hopes for the destruction of the Dimona nuclear plant where the Jewish state is alleged to have secretly built hundreds of atomic bombs.
The former nuclear technician, who has spent 18 years in prison for divulging secrets from Dimona and is due to be freed tomorrow, also said he had no new information to reveal about the facility where he worked from 1977 to 1985.
Excerpts of the interview, apparently leaked by the security establishment, appeared in two Israeli newspapers yesterday.
People involved in Vanunu's defense described the interrogation, conducted last month, as an attempt to extract statements that could be used in court to justify meting out more punishment against him. They also said security officials were trying to discredit Vanunu, whose supporters from abroad -- including celebrities and international figures -- have descended on Israel in the days leading up to his release.
''I want them to destroy the reactor," the 49-year-old Vanunu is quoted as saying in one of the two newspapers, Yedioth Ahronoth. ''Like the reactor was destroyed in Iraq, I want Israel's reactor to be destroyed."
He did not explain who he wanted to destroy the reactor, although some Israelis inferred from the comment that he wants international pressure to force Israel to destroy the facility. Israeli security officials refused to comment on the statement.
Vanunu lifted the veil on Israel's secret nuclear program in 1986 by giving the London Times pictures and detailed descriptions of Dimona, in breach of a secrecy agreement he signed when he began working at the plant. The newspaper concluded from interviews with the former technician that Israel had built at least 200 thermonuclear bombs at the facility, making its atomic arsenal the sixth-largest in the world.
He was abducted to Israel in a Mossad operation and convicted of treason in a secret trial.
His plight has made Vanunu a hero among antinuclear activists around the world -- he has been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize this year -- but a pariah in the Jewish state.
The Israeli government, citing the risk that Vanunu would reveal more details about Dimona, has imposed a series of restrictions on him, including barring him from traveling abroad, meeting foreigners without permission, and from getting close to a foreign embassy or a border crossing.
But analysts believe Israel is more concerned Vanunu's stature abroad would allow him to lead an effective campaign to strip the Jewish state of its nuclear weapons.
''I think what worries the Israelis is that if he goes to the US and appears before Congress, even if he just repeats what he already told the London Times, that would be enough to create the seeds of a crisis between Washington and Israel," said Yoel Cohen, a political analyst who wrote a book on the Vanunu affair.
Cohen said Washington has turned a blind eye to Israel's nuclear weapons with an understanding that Israel would never state clearly that it has them. Any change in that ambiguous posture could force the United States to scale back the nearly $3 billion Israel gets in foreign assistance because of an American law that bars the United States from providing aid to a county with an unauthorized nuclear weapons program.
Vanunu, who wants to immigrate to the United States, is appealing the restrictions to the High Court of Justice. The first hearing is due in the coming days. Legal specialists say the court will uphold the restrictions only if the state can prove Vanunu intends to violate the secrecy agreement again.
In the interrogation excerpts published yesterday, Vanunu told security officials his information on Dimona was outdated.
''I've been inside [prison] for 20 years. Everything has changed. . . . The technology advanced by huge leaps. So what I saw now appears to me to be very old," he said.
An American woman who visited Vanunu in prison yesterday said he was disheartened by the publication of his interrogation.
''He feels more and more like they're trying to trap him," said Mary Eoloff, who, with her husband Nick, legally adopted Vanunu in 1997 in a failed bid to win US citizenship for the prisoner.
''He was just brokenhearted. We told him it wasn't over yet -- that the appeal would still be heard in court," Eoloff, who traveled from St. Paul to Israel last week, said in an interview.
Vanunu, who converted to Christianity weeks before giving the interview to the London Times, also was quoted as saying in the interrogation that Israel should be supplanted by a Palestinian state where Jews could live but were not sovereign. Such a position puts Vanunu on the fringe of Israeli society.
Security officials lobbied Prime Minister Ariel Sharon to keep Vanunu locked up even after his release date under emergency regulations that allow Israel to imprison people without trial. The Israeli leader opted for the restrictions instead.
But Oded Feller, an attorney with the Association for Civil Rights in Israel, said the measures were more severe than any imposed on a former convict.
''The practical implication is that his imprisonment will continue in another form," Feller said.
Hundreds of people are expected to greet Vanunu when he leaves Ashkelon prison on the Mediterranean tomorrow, including the Eoloffs and British actress Susannah York.
Other supporters include Daniel Ellsberg, a Vietnam-era whistle-blower who leaked the US government's war documents known as the Pentagon Papers. A letter Ellsberg wrote to mark Vanunu's release refers to the Israeli prisoner as ''the preeminent hero and whistle-blower of the nuclear era."
Vanunu plans to live in a rented apartment in Tel Aviv when he leaves prison, according to one of his brothers, Meir Vanunu.