North Korea helping Syria on nuclear facility?

WASHINGTON — North Korea may be cooperating with Syria on some sort of nuclear facility in Syria, according to new intelligence the United States has gathered over the past six months, sources said. The evidence, said to come primarily from Israel, includes dramatic satellite imagery that led some U.S. officials to believe that the facility could be used to produce material for nuclear weapons.

The new information, particularly images received in the past 30 days, has been restricted to a few senior officials under the instructions of National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley, said the sources, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. Some were skeptical that North Korea and Syria, which have cooperated on missile technology, would have a joint nuclear venture.

The New York Times first reported on the intelligence linking North Korea and Syria Tuesday.

Israel conducted a mysterious air raid last week against targets in Syria. The Israeli government has refused to divulge any details, but a former Israeli official said he had been told that it was an attack against a facility capable of making unconventional weapons.

Others have speculated that Israel was testing Syria's air defenses in preparation for a raid on Iran or that Israel was targeting weapons destined for Hezbollah in Lebanon.

Bashar Jaafari, Syria's ambassador to the United Nations, ridiculed the idea of a Hezbollah connection to reporters.

Syria has signed the nuclear nonproliferation treaty but has not agreed to enhanced inspections by the International Atomic Energy Agency. GlobalSecurity.org, which offers information on weapons of mass destruction, said that "although Syria has long been cited as posing a nuclear proliferation risk, the country seems to have been too strapped for cash to get far."

Syria has a Chinese-supplied "miniature" research reactor at Dayr al-Hajar, but has been unable to obtain larger reactors because of international pressure on potential sellers.

The new intelligence comes at an awkward moment for the Bush administration, which since the beginning of the year has pursued an agreement with North Korea on ending its nuclear weapons programs. U.S. and North Korean officials held talks last week in Geneva on normalizing relations, and this week U.S., Russian and Chinese experts visited North Korea's Yongbyon nuclear facility to consider ways to disable it.