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Politics : American Presidential Politics and foreign affairs -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Peter Dierks who wrote (23492)	10/26/2007 11:15:36 AM
From: Peter Dierks	Respond to of 71588

Photos show cleansing of suspect Syrian site By William J. Broad and Mark Mazzetti Published: October 25, 2007 Follow to the link at the bottom and see the photos! New commercial satellite photos show that a Syrian site believed to have been attacked by Israel last month no longer bears any obvious traces of what some analysts said appeared to have been a partly built nuclear reactor. Two photos, taken Wednesday from space by rival companies, show the site near the Euphrates River to have been wiped clean since August, when imagery showed a tall square building there measuring about 150 feet on a side. The Syrians reported an attack by Israel in early September; the Israelis have not confirmed that. Senior Syrian officials continue to deny that a nuclear reactor was under construction, insisting that Israel hit a largely empty military warehouse. But the images, federal and private analysts say, suggest that the Syrian authorities rushed to dismantle the facility after the strike, calling it a tacit admission of guilt. "It's a magic act — here today, gone tomorrow," a senior intelligence official said. "It doesn't lower suspicions; it raises them. This was not a long-term decommissioning of a building, which can take a year. It was speedy. It's incredible that they could have gone to that effort to make something go away." Any attempt by Syrian authorities to clean up the site would make it difficult, if not impossible, for international weapons inspectors to determine the exact nature of the activity there. Officials from the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna have said they hoped to analyze the satellite images and ultimately inspect the site in person. David Albright, president of the Institute for Science and International Security, a private group in Washington that released a report on the Syrian site earlier this week, said the expurgation of the building was inherently suspicious. "It looks like Syria is trying to hide something and destroy the evidence of some activity," Albright said in an interview. "But it won't work. Syria has got to answer questions about what it was doing." The striking difference in the satellite photos surprised even some outside experts who were skeptical that Syria might be developing a nuclear program. "It's clearly very suspicious," said Joseph Cirincione, an expert on nuclear proliferation at the Center for American Progress in Washington. "The Syrians were up to something that they clearly didn't want the world to know about." Cirincione said the photographic evidence "tilts toward a nuclear program" but does not prove that Syria was building a reactor. Besides, he said, even if it was developing a nuclear program, Syria would be years away from being operational, and thus not an imminent threat. Gordon Johndroe, a White House spokesman, declined to comment on the satellite pictures. The new satellite images of the Syrian site were taken by DigitalGlobe, in Longmont, Colorado, and SPOT Image Corporation, in Chantilly, Virginia. They show just a smooth, unfurrowed area where the large building once stood. The desolate Syrian site is located on the eastern bank of the Euphrates River some 90 miles north of the Iraqi border and 7 miles north of the desert village of At Tibnah. An airfield lies nearby. The new images reveal that the tall building is gone but still show a secondary structure and a pumping station on the Euphrates. Reactors need water for cooling. The purported reactor at the site is believed to be modeled on a North Korean model, which uses buildings a few feet longer on each side than the Syrian building that vanished. Albright called the Syrian site "consistent with being a North Korean reactor design." Imad Moustapha, the Syrian ambassador to the United States, denied in an interview last week with The Dallas Morning News that his country was trying to build a reactor. "There is no Syrian nuclear program whatsoever," he said. "It's an absolutely blatant lie." Later in the interview, he said, "We understand that if Syria even contemplated nuclear technology, then the gates of hell would open on us." iht.com

To: Peter Dierks who wrote (23492)	11/4/2007 9:38:46 PM
From: Peter Dierks	Respond to of 71588

Syria-North Korea Nuclear Nexus by Robert Maginnis Posted 11/02/2007 ET President Bush is mum about Israel’s raid on an alleged Syrian nuclear facility possibly because the administration doesn’t want to scuttle the North Korean denuclearization talks. If the facility was a reactor being built with the help of the North Koreans, the President would be in the same position as his predecessor: having fallen for North Korean promises that weren’t worth the breath with which they were spoken. Is the appearance of success in the Six Party Talks more important to the United States than the reality of Mideast nuclear prolferation? Apparently so. On September 6, Israel launched F-16I fighters to attack a massive concrete building inside Syria, 90 miles north of the Iraq border. Intelligence officials say they have watched the structure being built since 2001 and according to the Washington Post Israeli fighters struck three days after a North Korean freighter off loaded suspicious cargo at a Syrian port that was then transferred to the raid site. Media reports indicate Israel had incontrovertible evidence – radioactive soil samples from the site – to prove Syria was pursuing a secretive nuclear program. Further, it’s significant that Mideast governments have been mute about the Israeli provocation except for Syrian President Bashir Assad who tepidly promised to retaliate in a manner and time of his choosing. Post-attack satellite images of the targeted facility show that the Syrians quickly razed the site ostensibly to cover up the contents hidden inside. Some experts have long wondered about Syria’s nuclear ambitions. In 2003, then US assistant secretary of state John Bolton said, “There was activity in Syria that I felt was evidence that they were trying to develop a nuclear weapon.” Recently, Andrew Semmel, acting deputy assistant secretary for nuclear nonproliferation policy admitted, “Syria was on the US nuclear watch list.” Soon after the September strike, the Washington-based Institute for Science and International Security (ISIS) suggested the Syrian building could have housed a reactor like North Korea’s Yongbyon plutonium facility. Reacting to Syria’s razing the site, ISIS president David Albright, a former United Nations weapons inspector, said “It looks like Syria is trying to hide something and destroy the evidence.” It’s common knowledge in the Mideast that North Korea is a WMD proliferator. Moshe Arens, Israel’s three time minister of defense, told this writer that North Korea has been “peddling technology” in the Mideast for “20 to 30 years.” Uzi Arad, the former director of intelligence for the Mossad, Israel’s ultra-secret intelligence agency, suggested that the bombed Syrian nuclear facility was “supplied by North Korea.” Arguably, the North Koreans pose a serious strategic threat to the US directly and indirectly. Last October, Pyongyang tested a nuclear device and has numerous long-range ballistic missiles that can reach the US homeland. That explains why the US takes the communist state’s direct threat seriously and has moved quickly to establish a national missile defense. That direct threat persuaded the Bush administration to launch the six-party denuclearization talks. Those negotiations are now entering a very sensitive period and the administration wants to avoid stumbling short of the goal line. That’s why Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has made the six-nation accord one of her top priorities. On October 25, Christopher Hill, assistant secretary for Bureau of East Asian and Pacific Affairs, testified to the House Committee on Foreign Affairs “I am pleased to report several positive and significant steps toward achieving our goal,” the verifiable denuclearization of the Korean peninsula through the six-party process. Hill stated that Pyongyang has taken steps to disable three nuclear facilities at Yongbyon. These actions would effectively block North Korea’s “known ability to produce plutonium – a major step towards the goal of achieving the verifiable denuclearization of the Korean peninsula,” Hill testified. North Korea may be shuttering its reactors, but based on history it will rattle the neutrons again once the economic benefits associated with cooperation dry up. More likely, Pyongyang is continuing its atomic program through proxies such as Syria. John Bolton, who also served as the US ambassador to the UN, said that North Korea may be using Syria and Iran as “safe havens” for its nuclear activity. In fact, Bolton said President Bush warned Pyongyang last year against transferring nuclear material to Syria. Syria has long shown an interest in nuclear technology. Even though it is a signatory to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, Damascus is interested in nuclear weapons albeit as a deterrence against Israel, which is believed to have a secret cache for end-time scenarios. In 1986, Syrian chief of staff General Hihmet al-Siabi suggested that Syria would strive to achieve strategic equality with Israel including nuclear parity. About the same time of this announcement, Pakistan’s nuclear proliferator, A.Q. Khan, was making the rounds to Iran, Libya and North Korea. No one has confirmed whether Syria was on Khan’s marketing plan, however. Syria has a nuclear program overseen by the IAEA which includes a 30 kilowatt Chinese-built neutron source reactor. Less public is who advises Syria’s nuclear enterprises. The Scientific Research Institute in Damascus has allegedly taken in Iraqi scientists prior to the recent Gulf war and Secretary Semmel said “We do know that there are a number of foreign technicians that have been in Syria. … There may have been contact between Syria and some secret suppliers for nuclear equipment.” Secretary Rice obliquely spoke to the possibly that North Korea passed nuclear technology to Syria. On September 20th, Rice told Fox News that the US is working on preventing “…the world’s most dangerous people from having the world’s most dangerous weapons.” Then she said “That’s why we have a Proliferation Security Initiative that tries to intercept dangerous cargos.” Remember, three days after a North Korean cargo ship off loaded “cement” at a Syrian port, the Israeli fighters struck. Israel’s raid must have been important enough to risk war. Likely, only a target that posed a serious threat for the Jewish state would have justified the attack and the deafening silence across the region and in Washington suggest that no state has anything to gain by publicizing the facts. Unless the US, Israeli and Syrian governments announce a contrary set of facts regarding the September attack, the evidence points to one conclusion: North Korea was supplying Syria with a nuclear reactor that could produce plutonium for a future Arab bomb. The Bush administration’s silence suggests desperation to keep the six-party talks on track. Tagging North Korea with nuclear proliferation would politically scuttle both the talks and what Secretary Rice hopes will become one of Bush’s key foreign policy legacies. Mr. Maginnis is a retired Army lieutenant colonel, a national security and foreign affairs analyst for radio and television and a senior strategist with the U.S. Army. humanevents.com