WASHINGTON -- As the Bush administration seeks to cinch a disarmament deal with North Korea, questions about Pyongyang's past defense cooperation with Syria have emerged as perhaps the principal stumbling block to a successful completion of the pact. North Korea missed a Dec. 31 deadline to fully declare the extent of its nuclear activities, as called for under a six-country negotiating process. But U.S. negotiators are voicing guarded confidence that they will eventually gain disclosure from Pyongyang on two key elements of its nuclear program: the number of atomic weapons and North Korea's believed attempt to develop a uranium-enrichment capacity to produce nuclear fuel. It is the issue of North Korea's believed assistance to third countries, particularly Syria, where U.S. officials say there remains significant distance between Washington and Pyongyang. North Korea continues to deny it has given any nuclear assistance to Syrian President Bashar Assad's government, though it hasn't denied conventional military support. And the international community itself remains divided over what they believe was the full extent of Pyongyang's military assistance to Damascus in recent years. "The Syria issue is where we really need to push," said a U.S. official involved in the six-party negotiations, which also include Russia, China, Japan and South Korea. "It's the one where we haven't made any headway." Media disclosure of an Israeli missile strike inside Syria last September brought to international attention the issue of North Korea's possible nuclear assistance to Damascus. The Israeli government declined to comment on its raid along Syria's Euphrates River, and Damascus has denied it has been attempting to develop a nuclear capacity, either for civilian or military use. But a number of U.S. and European officials familiar with the intelligence have said in recent weeks that they believe Israel destroyed a nascent nuclear reactor Syria was developing in cooperation with North Korea. These officials said spy satellites detected North Korean workers regularly appearing at the Euphrates site. And photographs taken of the facility showed its dimensions and structure bore numerous similarities to the Yongbyon nuclear reactor North Korea is currently disabling as part of its disarmament agreement with the U.S. Satellite photos also showed Syrian bulldozers had cleared the site days after the Israeli strike, a sign to some counterproliferation experts that Damascus was attempting to cover up its activities. A senior European diplomat working on Middle East issues said Western governments, after reviewing intelligence on the Israeli strike, have reached "some sort of common ground...that there seems to have been cooperation between Syria and North Korea" on nuclear development. Still, seeking to clarify the extent of North Korea's activities inside Syria remains a major obstacle for the U.S. and other countries attempting to finalize the nuclear agreement with Pyongyang, say U.S. officials. Neither Syria nor Israel has been willing to provide information to inspectors from the United Nations nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency, about the activities of the site the Israelis destroyed. And, even inside the U.S. government, intelligence information concerning the Israeli action has been tightly controlled by just a few senior officials. The result is that there remains a lack of consensus among the five nations negotiating with North Korea over what exactly Pyongyang is supposed to divulge. "Some actors believe that what's been disclosed [about Syria] is serious and it's nuclear. But it's not universally accepted," said the official close to the six-party talks.
