Syria, NKorea Deny Nuclear Cooperation

DAMASCUS,Syria-Syria and North Korea denied Tuesday they are cooperating on a Syrian nuclear program, and they accused U.S. officials of spreading the allegations for political reasons-either to back Israel or to block progress on a deal between Washington and Pyongyang.A front-page editorial in the government newspaper Tishrin also was critical of the United States for failing to condemn a Sept. 6 Israeli incursion, which it called a violation of international law.Details of the incursion remain unclear. U.S. officials have said Israeli warplanes struck a target. A senior U.S. nonproliferation official said last week that North Korean personnel were in Syria helping its nuclear program, raising speculation that the Israelis were targeting a nuclear installation.Syria has said only that warplanes entered its airspace, came under fire from anti-aircraft defenses, and dropped munitions and fuel tanks to lighten their loads while they fled.Andrew Semmel, acting deputy assistant secretary of state for nuclear nonproliferation policy, said Syria may have had contacts with "secret suppliers" to obtain nuclear equipment. He did not identify the suppliers, but said North Koreans were in Syria and that he could not exclude involvement by the network run by the disgraced Pakistan nuclear scientist A.Q. Khan.Israel has clamped a news blackout on the raid.North Korea strongly denied it secretly helped Syria develop a nuclear program, maintaining the charge was fabricated by U.S. hard-liners to block progress in the North's relations with the US.A Syrian Cabinet minister ridiculed the speculation about any cooperation with North Korea."All this rubbish is not true. I don't know how their imagination has reached such creativity,"Bouthaina Shaaban said."Regretfully, the international press is busy justifying an aggression on a sovereign state and the world should be busy condemning it instead of inventing reasons and aims of this aggression," he told Lebanon's Hezbollah TV station Al-Manar.Syria's nuclear program has long been considered minimal, and the country is known to have only a small research reactor. In Vienna, officials for the International Atomic Energy Agency declined comment.But a diplomat associated with the agency said the IAEA "didn't know anything about any nuclear facility in Syria, and if there is something there, we should know."Syria was the subject of IAEA investigation in 2004 on suspicions it could have been a customer of the nuclear black market run by the Khan network-the same operation that supplied Iran and Libya with materials for their clandestine atomic projects. But the diplomat, who demanded anonymity for discussing confidential information, said the IAEA found no concrete evidence of such activity.The issue also was raised Tuesday at U.N. headquarters in New York, where Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon told reporters he was awaiting clarification on the "intrusion of Israeli air force into Syrian airspace." Ban said he read North Korea's report denying involvement but did not have any independent information.The editorial in Tishrin, which reflects Syrian government thinking in a country where the media is tightly controlled, said the U.S. accusations show Washington's pro-Israel bias and have no credibility.It said Washington was "busy on behalf of Israel circulating claims" that the incursion involved "possible nuclear facilities supplied by (North) Korea.""The strange thing is that the Americans are talking on behalf of Israel and are providing excuses and concocting new false spins such as talking about presumed Syrian nuclear activity and completely turning a blind eye about the Israeli nuclear danger," the Syrian editorial said.
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As in the days of Noah...