Back in December North Korea condemned the Israeli raid on what we now know to be a Syrian nuclear reactor.
North Korea lashed out Tuesday at Israel for invading Syrian airspace last Thursday, its official news agency said.”This is a very dangerous provocation little short of wantonly violating the sovereignty of Syria and seriously harassing the regional peace and security,” a spokesman for the DPRK Foreign Ministry was quoted as saying by the Korean Central News Agency.
The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea strongly denounces the above-said intrusion and extends full support and solidarity to the Syrian people in their just cause to defend the national security and the regional peace,” he added.
Last week it was revealed that perhaps there was an even bigger reason for North Korea to condemn Israel.
Ten North Koreans may have been killed in an Israeli air strike on Syria in September, NHK reported on its Web site, citing unidentified South Korean intelligence officials.The 10 people, whose remains were cremated and returned to North Korea in October, had been helping with the construction of a nuclear reactor in Syria, Japan’s public broadcaster said. Some North Koreans probably survived the air attack, NHK said.
Now, President Bush is making the connection explicitly. The New York Times reports:
Making the first remarks in public about the Israeli attack by any American official, Mr. Bush said that his administration maintained a cloak of secrecy to avoid the risk of further military conflict in the region, including possible Syrian retaliation against Israel. He said that risk of conflict “was reduced†now.Mr. Bush did not explain why exactly the administration disclosed the information at this point, but the timing coincided with renewed efforts to persuade North Korea to abide by last year’s agreement to acknowledge all of its nuclear activities. The North Korean activities include what administration officials assert are a still undisclosed program to enrich uranium and the sale of nuclear technology to countries like Syria.
“We also wanted to advance certain policy objectives through the disclosures, and one would be to the North Koreans to make it abundantly clear that we, we may know more about you than you think,†Mr. Bush said at a White House news conference.
Senior officials have signaled that the administration may accept a less-than-full disclosure, allowing North Korea, for example, not to explain its nuclear cooperation with Syria in the kind of detail that American officials have now done.
In his remarks on Tuesday and at Camp David on April 19, the president appeared to back off such a compromise. He restated his demand that North Korea make “a complete disclosure†about its proliferation and enrichment activities.
More than that President Bush emphasized:
Mr. Bush said that the disclosure of a covert Syrian reactor, which Syria has denied, should persuade other countries to support United Nations Security Council resolutions intended to keep Iran and other countries from developing nuclear arms.“We have an interest in sending a message to Iran and the world for that matter about just how destabilizing a nuclear proliferation would be in the Middle East,†he said.
In addition to his comments about the North Korean aid to Syria, the President also added (according to the Washington Post):
Bush avoided criticism of former president Jimmy Carter’s recent talks with Hamas, the radical Palestinian group classified by the U.S. government as a terrorist entity. The United States refuses to engage with Hamas, which Bush said is “undermining peace.””They’re the ones whose foreign policy objective is the destruction of Israel,” he said. “They’re the ones who are trying to create enough violence to stop the advance of the two-party state solution.”
The President implicitly gives too much credit to Fatah, but it’s correct for him to acknowledge this.
Left unsaid, is that this episode suggests that the “axis of evil” was quite possibly more than just a rhetorical flourish.
Crossposted on Soccer Dad
