Friday, April 25, 2008

The CIA or the Office of Strategic Plans? "CIA to describe North Korea-Syria Nuclear Ties"

I'm attending a conference today and a colleague joked about how the CIA knew that it was in fact North Koreans visiting the nuclear sites in Syria: "Easy - they were wearing Hard Rock Cafe Pyongyang t-shirts"
The consensus among those I know seems to be that this is a last-ditch attempt by administration hawks to ensure that talks with North Korea do not take place (and that Israeli-Syrian peace talks are also derailed)

CIA to describe North Korea-Syria nuclear ties

Officials will tell Congress members this week that North Korea was helping Syria build a reactor last year when it was destroyed by an Israeli airstrike, a U.S. official says.

By Paul Richter and Greg Miller
Los Angeles Times Staff Writers

April 23, 2008

WASHINGTON — CIA officials will tell Congress on Thursday that North Korea had been helping Syria build a plutonium-based nuclear reactor, a U.S. official said, a disclosure that could touch off new resistance to the administration's plan to ease sanctions on Pyongyang.

The CIA officials will tell lawmakers that they believe the reactor would have been capable of producing plutonium for nuclear weapons but was destroyed before it could do so, the U.S. official said, apparently referring to a suspicious installation in Syria that was bombed last year by Israeli warplanes.

The CIA officials also will say that though U.S. officials have had concerns for years about ties between North Korea and Syria, it was not until last year that new intelligence convinced them that the suspicious facility under construction in a remote area of Syria was a nuclear reactor, the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity when discussing plans for the briefing.

The administration is planning to ease sanctions on North Korea as part of talks aimed at removing Pyongyang's nuclear weapons. The six nations involved in the talks, which also include China, Russia, South Korea and Japan, have been negotiating since 2003.


You can read the rest here.

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