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Did US overlook Syrian nukes?

This two-picture combo shows satellite images made available by Digital Globe of a suspected nuclear facility site in Syria before, left, and after an Israeli airstrike. The image on the left is from Aug. 5 and the image on the right is from Oct. 24. PHOTO: AP

The mystery surrounding the construction of what might have been a nuclear reactor in Syria deepened on Friday, when a company released a satellite photo showing that the main building was well under way in September 2003 -- four years before Israeli jets bombed it.

The long genesis was likely to raise questions about whether the administration of US President George W. Bush overlooked a nascent atomic threat in Syria while planning and executing a war in Iraq, which was later found to have no active nuclear program.

A senior US intelligence official said on Friday that US analysts had looked carefully at the site from its early days, but were unsure whether it posed a nuclear threat.

In the time before the Iraq War, Bush and his senior advisers sounded many alarms about Baghdad's reconstituting its nuclear program. But they have never publicly discussed what many analysts say appears to have been a long-running nuclear effort next door.

On Friday, independent analysts, examining the latest satellite image, suggested that work on the site might have begun around 2001 and the senior intelligence official agreed with that analysis. That early date is potentially significant in terms of North Korea's suspected aid to Syria, suggesting that North Korea could have begun its assistance in the late 1990s.

A dispute has broken out between conservatives and US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice over the administration's pursuit of diplomacy with North Korea in the face of intelligence that North Korea might have helped Syria design a nuclear reactor.

The new image could give ammunition to those in the administration, including Rice, who call for diplomacy. If North Korea started its Syrian aid long ago, the officials could argue that the assistance was historical, not current, and that diplomacy should move ahead.

The progress of the site in late 2003 also raises new questions about a disagreement at the time between intelligence analysts and John Bolton, then the US State Department's top arms control official.

In the summer of 2003, Bolton's testimony on Capitol Hill was delayed after a dispute erupted in part over whether Syria was actively pursuing a nuclear weapon. Some intelligence officials said Bolton overstated the Syrian threat.

"There was disagreement about what Syria was interested in and how much we should be monitoring it," Bolton said in an interview on Friday. "There was activity in Syria that I felt was evidence that they were trying to develop a nuclear program."

Bolton declined to say whether he had knowledge at the time about the site that the Israelis struck in September.

Spokesmen for the CIA and the National Security Council declined to comment.

The new image of the desolate Syrian site was released on Friday by GeoEye, in Dulles, Virginia.
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