Israel fears U.S. hearings on Syrian reactor will expose top-secret data
By Amos Harel, Shmuel Rosner, and Barak Ravid, Haaretz Correspondents, and AP
Defense officials in Jerusalem have expressed concern that classified details of Israel's bombing of a Syrian nuclear facility last September will be revealed during Congressional hearings on the incident Thursday in Washington.
The American administration is slated to provide Thursday, for the first time, extensive details about the nature of the compound destroyed by the Israel Air Force on September 6.
The Los Angeles Times reported Wednesday that Congress will hear from the Central Intelligence Agency that the facility destroyed in the Israel Air Force attack was a nuclear reactor for producing plutonium.
Israel, however, does not intend to break the official silence it has maintained on the matter for the past seven months. Security sources told Haaretz on Wednesday night that the government will not go public with new information in the case.
The Prime Minister's Office declined to comment on the matter Wednesday, and referred Haaretz to Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's statements last week in his Pesach interview with media outlets, in which he said that "the Syrians know what our position is, and we know what their expectations are."
Thursday's briefings of the Senate and House Intelligence committees, as well as the Senate Armed Services Committee, will deal for the first time with evidence that North Korea was helping Syria build a nuclear reactor similar to its facility at Yongbyon - in the west-central part of the country - a U.S. government official familiar with the matter said Tuesday. That reactor has in the past produced a small amount of plutonium, which can be a component in nuclear weapons.
Since Israel learned of the planned Congressional hearings three weeks ago, defense officials have expressed concerns that publication of classified details about the attack could compel Syria to resort to a violent response, or at any rate reignite tensions between Jerusalem and Damascus.
Partly as a result of Israeli defense establishment pressure on the government, the Americans eventually agreed to hold closed-door briefings. But apparently a representative of the American intelligence community will conduct a background news briefing afterward for senior Washington-based security affairs commentators.
Israel presumes that this news briefing will result in a lot of information that will later be published in the American media.
The information from the U.S. will evidently focus on questions relating to the type of facility that was attacked, the extent of the nuclear partnership between North Korea and Syria, and the quality of the intelligence Israel and the U.S. had about the Syrian program.
The administration will probably volunteer fewer details about the manner in which the attack was carried out, and the forces and units that participated in it. For now, Israel's policy in the matter remains unchanged, and no official reactions are expected from Jerusalem revealing further details about the bombing raid.
Nor, as far as is known, will Israel's military censorship office alter the blackout it imposed on this case, so the Israeli media will be allowed to cite only details that are published in the U.S., without adding any information of their own.
A senior U.S. administration official said that Thursday's briefing was scheduled because the intelligence community had been deluged for months with congressional requests for information about North Korean activity in Syria and the Israeli air strike, and felt it was now time to brief lawmakers.
Middle East experts in the administration are worried that the timing of the briefing might upstage visits to Washington this week by Jordanian King Abdullah II and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, and hurt Arab-Israeli peace prospects with allegations of nefarious activity by an Arab nation with the aid of North Korea, the official said.
haaretz.com |
