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Analysts Find Israel Struck a Nuclear Project Inside Syria

[New York Times] David E. Sanger and Mark Mazzetti - Israel's air attack on Syria on Sep. 6 was directed against a site that Israeli and American intelligence analysts judged was a partly constructed nuclear reactor, apparently modeled on one North Korea has used to create its stockpile of nuclear weapons fuel. The New York Times reported earlier that a debate had begun within the Bush administration. Officials did not say that the administration had ultimately opposed the Israeli strike, but that Secretary of State Rice and Defense Secretary Gates were particularly concerned about the ramifications of a pre-emptive strike in the absence of an urgent threat. North Korea has long provided assistance to Syria on a ballistic missile program, but any assistance toward the construction of the reactor would have been the first clear evidence of ties between the two countries on a nuclear program. North Korea has successfully used its five-megawatt reactor at the Yongbyon nuclear complex to reprocess nuclear fuel into bomb-grade material, a model that some American and Israeli officials believe Syria may have been trying to replicate.
2007-10-15 01:00:00
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