Syria-North Korea Nuke Link.

Citing US government sources, The Washington Post on Sept. 21 reported that Israel's Sept. 6 air strikes on northern Syria's suspected nuclear site set up in apparent collaboration with North Korea came after Israel shared intelligence with President Bush this summer indicating that North Korean nuclear personnel were in Syria. The Bush administration has not commented on the Israeli raid or the underlying intelligence. The Post quoted its sources as saying: Although the administration was deeply troubled by the Israeli assertion that North Korea was assisting the nuclear ambitions of a country closely linked with Iran, the White House opted against an immediate response because of concerns it would undermine long-running negotiations aimed at convincing North Korea to abandon its nuclear programme.

The paper added: "Ultimately, however, the United States is believed to have provided Israel with some corroboration of the original intelligence before Israel proceeded with the raid, which hit the Syrian facility in the dead of night to minimise possible casualties, the sources said. The target of Israel's attack was said to be located...near the Turkish border. A Middle East expert who interviewed one of the pilots involved said they operated under such strict operational security that the airmen flying air cover for the attack aircraft did not know details of the mission. The pilots who conducted the attack were briefed only after they were in the air, he said".

The Post said: "US sources would only discuss the Israeli intelligence, which included satellite imagery, on condition of anonymity, and many details about the North Korean-Syrian connection remain unknown. The quality of the Israeli intelligence, the extent of North Korean assistance and the seriousness of the Syrian effort are uncertain, raising the possibility that North Korea was merely unloading items it no longer needed. Syria has actively pursued chemical weapons in the past, but not nuclear arms - leaving some proliferation experts sceptical of the intelligence that prompted the Israeli attack".

Syria and North Korea have both denied they were co-operating on a nuclear programme. President Bush refused to comment on Israel's attack on Sept. 20, but he issued a blunt warning to North Korea that "the exportation of information and/or materials" would affect negotiations under which North Korea would give up its nuclear programmes in exchange for energy aid and diplomatic recognition. Bush added: "To the extent that they are proliferating, we expect them to stop that proliferation, if they want the six-party talks to be successful", referring to the negotiations which also include China, Japan, South Korea and Russia.

Unlike Israel's destruction of an Iraqi nuclear reactor in June 1981, Israel made no announcement of the Sept. 6 raid and imposed strict censorship on reporting by the Israeli media. Syria made only muted protests, and Arab leaders have remained silent.

The Post quoted Bruce Riedel, a former intelligence officer at Brookings Institution's Saban Centre, as saying: "There is no question it was a major raid. It was an extremely important target. It came at a time the Israelis were very concerned about war with Syria and wanted to dampen down the prospects of war. The decision was taken despite their concerns it could produce a war. That decision reflects how important this target was to Israeli military planners".

Riedel said: Israel had long known about Syria's interest in chemical and even biological weapons, but "if Syria decided to go beyond that, Israel would think that was a real red line". The Post quoted Edward Djerejian, a former US ambassador to Syria and founding director of Rice University's Baker Institute, as saying when he was in Israel this summer he noticed "a great deal of concern in official Israeli circles about the situation in the north", in particularly whether Syria's young ruler, Bashar al-Assad , "had the same sensitivity to red lines that his father had". Bashar succeeded his father Hafez al-Assad  as president of Syria in mid-2000. Gen. Hafez died of a heart attack in June 2000.

The Post said the Israeli attack came just three days after a North Korean ship docked at the Syrian port of Tartus, carrying a cargo officially listed as cement. The Post added: "The ship's role remains obscure. Israeli sources have suggested it carried nuclear equipment, others have claimed it contained only missile parts, and some have said the ship's arrival and the attack are merely coincidental. One source suggested that Israel's attack was actually prompted by a fear of press leaks on the intelligence".

Iranian WMD Experts In Syria: Jane's Defence Weekly on Sept. 19 reported that 15 Syrian military personnel and an undisclosed number from Iran had died when an attempt to fit a chemical weapon warhead to a Scud missile ended in a massive, accidental explosion. Syria had said that an explosion at a military installation in Aleppo on July 26 was conventional and caused by unexpectedly high outside temperatures.

Quoting unnamed Syrian defence sources, Jane's reported that the explosion happened as Iranian technicians were teaching Syrian counterparts how to fit a mustard gas warhead to a Scud C missile. Volatile rocket fuel ignited in a laboratory where the rocket was being worked on and the force of the blast was so great that it blew up a neighbouring storage facility for chemical weapons. The Daily Telegraph on Sept. 21 quoted a source as saying: "The blast dispersed chemical agents across the facility and outside".