WASHINGTON — At the moment America has disclosed to the world Israel’s success in ending a North Korea-aided nuclear weapons project in the Syrian desert, the Syrians are saying Prime Minister Olmert will relinquish the Golan Heights.

The Israelis are offering no public comment. But Syria’s expatriates minister, Buthaina Shaaban, told Al-Jazeera that the Israeli premier had instructed Turkey’s prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, to deliver the message. “Olmert is ready for peace with Syria on the grounds of the return of the Golan Heights in full to Syria,” she told the Arab satellite network.

The interview aired before the White House instructed the intelligence community to brief Congress and journalists on the details of Syria’s undeclared nuclear weapons program. The briefing included a videotape of North Korean technicians building the same kind of lab reactor as the one found in North Korea’s Yongbyon facility, according to congressional sources and the Washington Post.

The public disclosure of the North Korea-Syria program changes the calculus for the president’s policies toward both Damascus and Pyongyang. Damascus will likely face a nuclear audit from the International Atomic Energy Agency and may be raising the Golan issue and the prospect of peace in hopes of distracting from its nuclear program. North Korea has agreed to, but has yet to deliver, a full declaration of its nuclear weapons program.

The Republican presumptive nominee for president, Senator McCain, said the disclosure of the activity, long suspected since Israeli aircraft destroyed the Syrian reactor building on September 6, should lead to the “widest possible condemnation by the international community.” He attacked Senator Obama for the Democratic presidential candidate’s promise to meet directly with Kim Jong Il without preconditions.

The Bush administration is coming under heavy fire from Republican and Democratic leaders in Congress for withholding the intelligence from even the intelligence committees of the House and Senate.

While most of Congress was kept in the dark on the Syrian nuclear program, the Democrats and Republicans on the intelligence committees and the leadership of both chambers of Congress were kept abreast before the September 6 operation. “I was informed about this potential facility in Syria a year ago,” the ranking Republican on the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, Peter Hoekstra, said in an interview. “The intelligence community did a laudable job of keeping appropriate people involved before September 6.”

After September 6 though, the Bush administration clammed up. Mr. Hoekstra said he pleaded with National Security Adviser, Stephen Hadley, to arrange briefings for at least the intelligence committees, but was rebuffed. “They argued the rationale was stability in the Middle East,” Mr. Hoekstra said.

The White House said it withheld the intelligence on Syria in the immediate aftermath of the bombing in part to avoid the potential of a regional war between Syria and Israel. “If Syria was forced to acknowledge the full extent of the September 6 operation, they would have to retaliate at the time,” one Bush administration official said. A White House spokeswoman, Dana Perino, demanded Syria come clean. “The Syrian regime must come clean before the world regarding its illicit nuclear activities.”

The State Department will provide the International Atomic Energy Agency with evidence it says will prove North Korea’s complicity in Syria’s undeclared nuclear program.

Syria’s ambassador to Washington, Imad Moustapha went on CNN and said the State Department showed him satellite photographs of a facility with no security guards, leading him to think the intelligence was bogus. “This is a fantasy and this administration has a proven record of fabricating stories about other countries’ WMDs,” he said. “It is so extraordinary. In the same White House statement, they say this was a secret building, yet commercial satellite services provided photos of that quote-unquote secret building in Syria.”

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, a Democrat from California, said she found the timing of the release of the information “interesting.” “This has happened a while ago and the timing of it is interesting,” she said. “I do think it is just another example where members of Congress, especially those on the committees of jurisdiction, should have been briefed long before now.”

Mr. Hoekstra said the White House “has seriously jeopardized its relationship with Congress. A bad relationship just got worse.”

Mr. Hoekstra and the president’s former ambassador to the United Nations, John Bolton, first raised the prospect of North Korea’s cooperation with Syria last fall after the Israeli strikes. Both men have pressed the president to make the intelligence available to Congress and the public.

Mr. Bolton said that in 2003 he personally clashed with some members of the intelligence community on the question of whether Syria had a nuclear weapons program. “The argument then was that Syria can’t be interested in nuclear weapons and it didn’t have the money to build a program,” he said. “But this is not about the money. North Korea can supply the technical capabilities, and Iran can supply the money.”

Mr. Bolton said that he suspected Iran, which has been sanctioned three times by the United Nations Security Council for its enrichment of uranium, played some role in Syria’s nuclear project. “Right now we don’t know what the role of Iran was in this if any,” he said. “But I would be amazed if Syria would be engaged in nuclear proliferation with North Korea without at least Iran’s acquiescence and quite possibly its active cooperation.” Iran and Syria signed a series of defense and intelligence agreements in June 2006. Both countries cooperate in supporting the Lebanese terrorist group Hezbollah.

The disclosures about Syrian and North Korean cooperation in some ways confirm the president’s 2002 axis of evil speech, which posited that Iran, Iraq, and North Korea cooperated in support of terrorism and weapons proliferation. A co-author of that speech, David Frum, when reached for a comment said, “There is now irrefutable public confirmation of North Korean and Syrian nuclear cooperation and suggestive indication of Iranian involvement. It’s almost like they formed an axis or something.”