Agence France-Presse,
Washington: Israel bombed a site in Syria last month that Israeli and US intelligence believe was a partly built nuclear reactor possibly modeled after one in North Korea, The New York Times said Sunday.
If the North Korean link is confirmed, that would complicate disarmament talks with the Stalinist state, officials said.
Citing unnamed US and foreign officials with access to the intelligence reports, the report said it appeared Israel carried out the September 6 raid to demonstrate its determination to snuff out even a nascent nuclear project in a neighboring state.
A senior Israeli official told the newspaper the strike was intended to “re-establish the credibility of our deterrent power.”
Several US officials said Israel may also have intended to send a similar signal to Iran regarding its nuclear aspirations.
Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad has said only that the target was an “unused military building” and that the bombs hit “nothing of consequence.”
The administration of President George W. Bush was divided about the strike, the paper said, and some senior policymakers still regard it as premature and fear the repercussions.
“There wasn't a lot of debate about the evidence,” the paper quoted a US official as saying of the discussions between the US and Israel.
“There was a lot of debate about how to respond to it.”
The facility that the Israelis struck in Syria appears to have been much further from completion than the Osirak nuclear reactor that Israel destroyed in Iraq in 1981, the paper said.
Officials said it would have been years before the Syrians could have used the reactor to produce the spent nuclear fuel that could, through a series of additional steps, be reprocessed into bomb-grade plutonium.
North Korea has long provided military assistance to Syria, but any help in building a reactor would have marked the first clear evidence of ties between the two countries on a nuclear program.
Such cooperation would complicate multi-national talks on North Korea's nuclear weapons program.
After the North Koreans conducted a nuclear test last year, Bush warned “the transfer of nuclear weapons or material by North Korea to state or non-state entities would be considered a grave threat to the United States, and we would hold North Korea fully accountable.”
US and foreign officials, however, would not confirm whether they believed the North Koreans sold or gave the plans to the Syrians, The New York Times reported.
Senator John McCain, a runner in the Republican White House race, said the report raised questions about North Korea's trustworthiness as the difficult talks on disarming its nuclear program continue.
“I really do believe that it argues… to make sure that any agreement we make with North Korea is a lot better than the one that failed under the Clinton administration,” he said on CBS television Sunday.
North Korea previously shut down the Yongbyon reactor under a 1994 agreement clinched during the US administration of president Bill Clinton.
McCain said he would continue the present negotiations but press for “iron-clad agreements that have no loopholes whatsoever,” calling also for China to exert more pressure on its North Korean ally.
In Washington and Israel, the raid has been shrouded in secrecy and information restricted to few officials. Israeli media has been allowed to publish only the fact that a raid occurred without comment from Israeli officials.
Visiting the region Sunday, US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice again refused to comment.
