WASHINGTON—The United States is convinced that North Korea helped Syria build a secret nuclear reactor, the White House said Thursday.
"We are convinced, based on a variety of information, that North Korea assisted Syria's covert nuclear activities," White House spokeswoman Dana Perino said in a statement.
"We have good reason to believe that reactor, which was damaged beyond repair on Sept. 6 of last year, was not intended for peaceful purposes," she said.
Perino also said North Korean and Syrian nuclear cooperation underscored the need for "further steps" by the international community against Iran's nuclear activities.
Nuclear Capabilities
The United States laid out intelligence Thursday it says shows North Korea helped Syria build a suspected nuclear reactor destroyed by Israel last year.
Here are some facts about North Korea's nuclear program.
The Facility
—North Korea's nuclear program dates back to at least the 1980s, and is centered at Yongbyon, about 60 miles north of Pyongyang.
—It consists of a five-megawatt reactor, a fuel fabrication facility and a plutonium reprocessing plant, where weapons-grade material would be extracted from spent fuel rods.
—In October 1994, the United States and North Korea struck a deal to freeze Yongbyon in exchange for more proliferation-resistant reactors to be built by an international consortium. That project has been canceled.
Escalation
—The U.S. confronted North Korea in October 2002 and accused it of having a clandestine plan to enrich uranium for weapons. North Korea, which denies having such a program, has ample supplies of natural uranium in its territory. In theory, it could enrich uranium away from the eyes of spy satellites.
—In February 2005, North Korea declared for the first time it had nuclear weapons.
—It conducted its first nuclear test with a plutonium-based bomb in October 2006.
The Tally
—U.S. officials said the North has produced about 50 kg (110 pounds) of plutonium, which proliferation experts said conservatively would be enough for about eight nuclear weapons—depending on the quality of the plutonium and weapon design.
Delivering a Weapon
—Experts doubt that the North can make a nuclear weapon small enough to mount on a warhead.
—The North test-fired seven missiles on July 2006, including its Taepodong-2 with a range that some experts said could one day reach U.S. territory. It fizzled soon after launch.
—The backbone of North Korea's air force is an aging fleet of 780 fighters and 80 bombers built with Soviet technology, the South's Defence Ministry said.
Sources: Reuters, Center for Nonproliferation Studies, intelligence reports, Congressional Research Service
U.S. Document Reveals North Korea Aided Syrian Nuclear Activities
The United States has concluded that North Korea helped Syria on a covert nuclear program before and after Israel destroyed a suspected reactor in Syria last year, according to a U.S. intelligence document.
"We are convinced, based on a variety of information, that North Korea assisted Syrian covert nuclear activities both before and after the reactor was destroyed," said the document released to reporters Thursday.
A senior Bush administration official said the United States and Israel had discussed policy options on how to deal with the suspected reactor but that Israel decided to destroy it on its own.
"At the end of the day, Israel made its own decision to take action," the official told reporters.
The official said the Bush administration initially sought to keep the Israeli strike secret because of a fear that its disclosure could increase pressure on Syria to retaliate.
He said the administration believed that risk had decreased and that discussing the matter more openly now could help the multilateral effort to get North Korea to abandon its nuclear programs.
"We are at the point ... where we believe going public will strengthen our negotiators as they try to get an accurate accounting of North Korea's nuclear programs," the official told reporters.
"We believe and hope that it will encourage North Korea to acknowledge its proliferation activity but also to provide a more complete and accurate disclosure of their plutonium activities and their (uranium) enrichment activities as well," the official said.
The document said the United States had come to the conclusion that the suspected Syrian nuclear reactor was all but finished in August.
"Our information supports the following key points: Syria was building a gas-cooled, graphite-moderated reactor that was nearing operational capability in August, 2007," the document said.
"The reactor would have been capable of producing plutonium for nuclear weapons, was not configured to produce electricity and was ill-suited for research."
Syria: U.S. Claims of North Korea Nuclear Help 'Fantasy'
Syria's ambassador to the United States on Thursday dismissed as "a fantasy" U.S. accusations that North Korea had helped his country build a secret nuclear reactor.
"This is a fantasy and this administration has a proven record about fabricating stories about other countries' WMDs," Ambassador Imad Moustapha said in an interview on CNN, referring to weapons of mass destruction.
"I hope the truth will be revealed to everybody," Moustapha said. "This will be a major embarrassment to the U.S. administration for a second time—they lied about Iraqi WMDs and they think they can do it again."
The United States laid out intelligence on Thursday it says shows North Korea helped Syria build a suspected nuclear reactor that was destroyed by Israel last year.
Moustapha said the building that the Washington alleges was a secret nuclear reactor was just an "ordinary military building" that was empty.
Moustapha said he had been called in by the U.S. State Department and told "a ridiculous story about an alleged Syrian nuclear project and they told me they had compelling evidence that Syria was planning to acquire nuclear technology."
He said the "secret building" was easily seen on commercial satellite pictures and it did not have any barbed wire or heightened security around it.
"I hope the American citizens and the representatives of the American people would not be as gullible this time as they were prior to the war on Iraq and they will stop believing the silly accusations of the U.S. administration," he said.
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