A senior Bush administration official said the timing of the intelligence disclosure was driven by a desire to strengthen the U.S. position in talks aimed at pressuring North Korea to provide a full accounting of its nuclear and proliferation activities.
Intelligence officials said North Korea appeared to have been helping Syria up until the facility was destroyed, and afterward helped it carry out damage assessments. If true, North Korea would be accused of continuing proliferation activities even as the United States was moving toward granting concessions, including removing North Korea from a list of nations that sponsor terrorism, as rewards for responsible behavior.
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Few calls to end talks
Some have questioned whether the release was part of an effort by foreign policy hawks to undermine the talks. But there were few calls for ending them.
Administration officials vowed to push ahead in negotiations, and Sen. John McCain of Arizona, the presumed Republican presidential nominee, said the government should seek "an agreement that advances America's national interests in the full denuclearization of North Korea."
The White House hopes to pressure Syria not just over the alleged nuclear plant but also because of what the administration considers its destabilizing involvement in Lebanon, its support for terrorism, its role as a transit point for foreign fighters in Iraq and its political repression.
"If Syria wants better relations with the international community, it should put an end to these activities," the White House said.
The administration has been pressuring Iran over its nuclear program, which Iran denies is intended to produce nuclear weapons.
In a briefing with reporters, a senior U.S. intelligence official said that American spy agencies had been monitoring suspicious activity between North Korea and Syria for nearly a decade but that the information had been inconclusive until the CIA obtained dozens of photos taken by a hand-held camera.
The images include shots taken inside what appears to be a reactor -- with a grid of cylinders for control rods and refueling ports that are arrayed almost identically to those found at Yongbyon. Photos from outside the facility show a structure with similar roof lines, rows of windows and boxlike buildings matching the layout at Yongbyon.
The dossier distributed by the administration describes the facility as a gas-cooled, graphite-moderated reactor that was not configured to produce electricity and was ill-suited for research.
