WASHINGTON – Reports that North Korea may be assisting Syria with a possible nuclear program will not derail efforts to carry out a deal to end North Korea's nuclear programs, the chief U.S. negotiator said yesterday, arguing that the reports emphasized the need to complete the agreement.
U.S. sources reported this week that Israel had recently provided the United States with evidence that North Korea has been cooperating with Syria on a nuclear facility.
But many outside nuclear experts have expressed skepticism that Syria, which has mostly focused on chemical and biological weapons, would be conducting nuclear trade with North Korea.
“The reason we have the six-party process, and the reason we have put together a number of pretty serious countries in this process, is to make sure that the North Koreans get out of the nuclear business,” Assistant Secretary of State Christopher Hill said yesterday, in advance of a new round of talks next week in Beijing. “At the end of all this, we would expect to have a pretty clear idea of, you know, whether they have engaged in proliferation in other countries.”
To the dismay of conservative critics, the Bush administration has pressed ahead with a deal that calls for North Korea to disclose all of its nuclear activities by the end of the year. Some have argued the administration is being snookered by Pyongyang to give up concessions without learning the full extent of its activities.
Andrew Semmel, acting deputy assistant secretary of state for nuclear nonproliferation policy, told the Associated Press yesterday in Rome that North Koreans were in Syria and that Damascus may have had contacts with “secret suppliers” to obtain nuclear equipment.
Meanwhile, a prominent U.S. expert on the Middle East, who has interviewed Israeli participants in a mysterious raid over Syria last week, reported that the attack appears to have been linked to the arrival three days earlier of a ship carrying material from North Korea labeled as cement.
The expert, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the attack target appears to have been a northern Syrian facility labeled an agricultural research center on the Euphrates River, close to Turkey. Israel has kept a close eye on the facility, believing that Syria was using it to extract uranium from phosphates.
The expert said it is not clear what the ship was carrying, but the emerging consensus in Israel was that it delivered nuclear equipment. The ship arrived Sept. 3 in Syria's port of Tartus; the attack occurred Sept. 6.
North Korea's government, which rarely comments on international matters, took the unusual step of publicly condemning the Israeli strike.
