North Korea Denounces Alleged Israeli Attack on Syria

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UNITED NATIONS — A rare statement by Kim Jong Il’s regime, which denounced Israel’s incursion into Syria last week, raised speculations about a possible North Korean role in Middle East tensions.

Pyongyang rarely issues public statements about world affairs, but on Tuesday, it became the only non-Muslim country to condemn Israel, calling its alleged air operation in Syria “a very dangerous provocation.” The rare statement came just as press reports from Washington said Israel had recently used its air force in an attempt to document alleged transfers of North Korean nuclear technology to Syria.

Four years ago, a former U.N. ambassador to the United Nations, John Bolton — a State Department official at the time — made several references to nuclear cooperation between Syria and North Korea during a congressional briefing, said a Washington source familiar with the testimony, who asked that his name not be used.

Mr. Bolton’s congressional testimony, part of which was made in a closed-door session, received little notice at the time. Later, during the prolonged confirmation hearings for the ambassadorial post at the United Nations, some of his Senate detractors accused Mr. Bolton of “distorting” intelligence data, citing his previous testimony on Syria’s nuclear ties to Pyongyang.

Yesterday, an unidentified Bush administration source was quoted by the New York Times as saying that Israel now believes North Korea might be “unloading” nuclear materials in Syria. Pyongyang has reportedly promised the administration’s negotiator, Christopher Hill, that by the end of this year, it would deliver on agreements made last winter. The promise, as well as a recent invitation of foreign nuclear inspectors to North Korea, indicated a faster denuclearization than previously thought. But the Bush administration official told the New York Times that “the Israelis think North Korea is selling to Iran and Syria what little they have left” of their nuclear program. It was unclear whether recent Israeli reconnaissance flights over Syria produced new evidence about those suspicions, the newspaper reported.

The Chinese state-run news agency Xinhua cited a North Korean Foreign Ministry official Tuesday as saying that Israel’s alleged violation of Syria’s airspace “is a very dangerous provocation, little short of wantonly violating the sovereignty of Syria and seriously harassing the regional peace and security.”

Xinhua cited the government run news source in Pyongyang, Korean Central News Agency, as quoting the Foreign Ministry official saying that North Korea “strongly denounces the abovesaid intrusion and extends full support and solidarity to the Syrian people in their just cause to defend the national security and the regional peace.”

North Korea has long been suspected of selling various weapons systems to anyone with enough cash — including Syria — and cooperating with Iran, an ally of Syria, on developing long-range missiles.

In one case that raised suspicions but was never confirmed, the now-defunct U.N. Development Program’s operation in North Korea encountered an unexplained disappearance of two North Korean officials sent to Tehran in 2006 to train in statistics applied in development projects.

According to a series of e-mails between officials from the UNDP, Iran, and North Korea — seen yesterday by The New York Sun — the two Korean statistics trainees, Pak Su Yong and Kim Gwang Song, failed to arrive in a Tehran destination for their due appointments there in June 2006. After four days in which their whereabouts were unknown, Messrs. Pak and Kim reappeared, saying they had suffered a stomach ailment. They said they had spent the four days at Pyongyang’s embassy in Tehran.

As they celebrated the Jewish New Year yesterday, Israeli officials maintained their weeklong, self-imposed official silence on Syria’s allegations.

Syrian officials, however, repeated their condemnation of Israel’s transgression. After delivering identical letters to the president of the Security Council and to Secretary-General Ban in which Damascus refrained from specifically demanding a council action, Syria’s U.N. ambassador, Bashar al-Jaafari, told reporters yesterday that the council should “react” to what he said was an Israeli violation of international law.

Mr. Jaafari dismissed various press reports that, citing regional and American officials, said Israel’s air incursion hit targets in Syria’s northeastern region last Thursday. “This is, as we say in French, blah blah,” Mr. Jaafari told the Sun, insisting the Israeli aircrafts hit no target in Syria and that they merely dropped some munitions and fuel tanks in their escape, after violating Syria’s airspace.


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