It is more than a little suspicious that the ever-secretive Bush administration has suddenly decided to go public with what it knows about North Korea’s nuclear connection with Syria. After seven months of refusing to acknowledge Israel’s air strike last September 6 on a suspected Syrian nuclear reactor, the intelligence community has now provided Congress with video images showing North Koreans inside the secret facility.
It is another example of this administration insisting that information be withheld for national security reasons - until there is a political reason to release it.
So why now? It is no secret that Republican hard-liners are outraged over a State Department-negotiated deal intended to eventually shut down North Korea’s nuclear weapons program. They are desperate to stop it, either by getting President Bush to pull back or provoking the easily provoked North Koreans into doing something stupid, like walking out of the talks.
The presentation to certain Congressional committees will also make it harder to win approval for aid to dismantle North Korean nuclear facilities - an essential part of the agreement.
We have said before that the deal is imperfect, not least because it does not require Pyongyang to come clean on the Syria deal. But at this point it is probably the best chance of moving North Korea toward a much more important goal: fully accounting for and eventually giving up its plutonium stocks and weapons.
For six years, President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney refused to seriously negotiate with North Korea. The result- North Korea tested a nuclear device and went from having enough plutonium for one or two weapons to eight or more. We’ve seen that movie. The world can’t afford a sequel.