미국 정부가 매우 민감한 북한의 對시리아 核기술 수출 의혹 관련 비디오를 의회에서 내일 공개키로 함에 따라 北核 협상이 새로운 국면을 맞고 있다. 작년 9월초 이스라엘 공군기는 시리아의 한 시설을 폭격했다. 그 직후 미국 언론은 이 시설이 북한과 관련이 있다고 보도했다. 차츰 구체적인 정보가 드러났다. 요사이는 북한기술자들이 영변 원자로를 모델로 한 흑연감속로를 지어주고 있었다고 정리되고 있다. 이 원자로가 완성되었다면 시리아는 핵폭탄 제조용 플루토늄을 생산했을 것이고 이는 중동을 파국으로 몰고 갔을 것이다.

이스라엘의 시리아 폭격관련 정보는 언론을 통해서만 퍼져갔다. 폭격한 이스라엘도, 폭격당한 시리아도, 사전에 폭격계획을 보고받았다는 미국도 침묵했다. 이 문제가 공식적으로 제기된 것은 北核 신고에 관한 논의를 통해서이다. 미국은 북한정권이 플루토늄뿐 아니라 우라늄 농축시설과 시리아 커넥션과 관련해서도 신고를 해야 한다는 입장이었고, 북한정권은 풀루토늄만 신고하겠다고 버티었다.

최근 미국의 힐 대사와 北의 김계관 사이에서 신고문안에 대한 대체적인 합의가 이뤄졌고, 미국정부가 미 의회의 동의를 받아 북한을 테러지원국 명단에서 해제해줄 것처럼 보도되었다. 미국 국무성은 신고문안에 대해서 미 의회에 설명하고 있는 중이다. 이런 미묘한 시기에 미국 정부가 시리아의 核 의혹 시설 관련 비디오를 공개하기로 한 것은 딕 체이니 부통령을 비롯한 강경파가 국무성의 온건파를 누른 것이 아닌가 하는 관측을 낳게 한다.

북한이 우라늄 농축 시설과 시리아 核 수출 의혹에 대해서 애매한 신고를 하도록 내버려두면 부시 행정부가 거센 비난에 직면할 것이다. 부시 대통령도 '우리가 약하게 보여선 안된다'고 말했고, 라이스 국무장관도 힐 대사를 지원하는 발언을 하지 않고 있다. 힐이 고립된 것이 아닌가 보여진다.

이런 사태 전개속에서 구경꾼 노릇을 하는 것은 한국 정부이고 한국 언론이다. 한국의 안보에도 큰 영향을 미치는 이 시리아 폭격 건에 대해서 노무현 정부 시절부터 한국 언론은 작게 다뤘다. 아마도 이 기사가 김정일 정권에 불리하기 때문일 것이다. 좌경화된 방송과 좌파언론은 김정일에 불리한 기사는 축소 은폐하고 미국에 불리한 기사는 키우는 버르장머리를 지금도 이어가고 있다.

이명박 정부가 이 사태에 대해서 입장정리가 되어 있는지도 알 수가 없다. 자신의 생존에 대해서 무관심하거나 의타적인 인간과 국가는 아무리 잘 살아도 '살찐 돼지의 행복'을 누릴 자격밖에 없다.

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*뉴욕타임스 기사

U.S. Sees N. Korean Links to Reactor
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By DAVID E. SANGER
Published: April 24, 2008
WASHINGTON — After seven months of near-total secrecy, the White House is preparing to make public on Thursday video evidence of North Koreans working at a suspected Syrian nuclear reactor just before it was destroyed in an Israeli airstrike last September.

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DigitalGlobe, via Associated Press
A satellite image shows a suspected nuclear reactor in Syria before Israel destroyed it last year.


Oded Balilty/Associated Press
Christopher R. Hill, the top American negotiator in nuclear talks with North Korea.
Until now, the administration has refused to discuss the video or the attack, other than in a highly classified briefing for a few allies and crucial members of Congress.

But senior officials in Israel and the United States have said the target was a nascent nuclear reactor that had been under construction for years. Israeli and American analysts had concluded that it was loosely modeled on the reactor North Korea used to obtain the fuel for its small nuclear weapons arsenal.

Israeli jets destroyed the site on Sept. 6, and the Syrians, after issuing some protests, bulldozed the area and constructed a building on the exact footprint of the old one. They have refused to allow international nuclear inspectors to visit the location.

The timing of the administration’s decision to declassify information about the Syrian project has raised widespread suspicions, especially in the State Department, that Vice President Dick Cheney and other administration hawks were hoping that releasing the information might undermine a potential deal with North Korea that would take it off an American list of state sponsors of terrorism.

“Making public the pictures is likely to inflame the North Koreans,” said one senior administration official who would not speak on the record because the White House and the State Department have declared there would be no public comment until the evidence is released. “And that’s just what opponents of this whole arrangement want, because they think the North Koreans will stalk off.”

But another senior official said it was possible that the revelations would force the North Koreans to describe their actions in Syria more fully when they issued a long delayed declaration of their nuclear activities.

That proposed deal, negotiated by Christopher R. Hill, the assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific affairs and the primary interlocutor with North Korea, has become the latest battleground in a seven-year struggle within the Bush administration over North Korea policy.

That policy has veered from efforts to squeeze North Korea in hopes that the government of Kim Jong-il will collapse, to negotiating with the country alongside Russia, China, South Korea and Japan, each of which has pursued a somewhat different approach toward the North.

Mr. Hill was put in charge of the talks more than three years ago in the hope of finding a new way to deal with the North Koreans. But support for him has wavered, and President Bush has repeatedly warned aides not to agree to anything that “makes me look weak,” according to former officials who sat in on meetings with him on North Korea.

Mr. Cheney’s office and other conservatives have argued that Mr. Hill’s proposed deal would amount to a huge concession. In return for a minimal declaration from North Korea — an accounting of how much plutonium it has produced — it would be removed from the terrorism list and would no longer be subject to economic sanctions under the Trading With the Enemy Act.

North Korea has refused to say what, exactly, it provided to the Syrians, or what happened to an effort to start a second pathway to building arms, using uranium.

The deal would allow the North to continue to fudge on those matters, leaving unexplained the question of why it appeared to be buying uranium enrichment equipment from Pakistan. That equipment, many experts believe, was intended to help North Korea build a second path to a bomb, in case it was forced to give up its plutonium program.

In a presentation on Thursday to crucial members of Congress, and then in a presentation to reporters, American intelligence officials are expected to show images from a video, believed to have been obtained through Israeli intelligence services. The video, which Mr. Hill has shown to senior South Korean officials, shows Korean faces among the workers at the Syrian plant.

Other pictures, officials say, show what appears to be the construction of a reactor vessel inside the building that Israel later destroyed. It is unclear what the administration is willing to release. Syria’s ambassador to the United States, Imad Moustapha, did not answer messages left for him on Wednesday.

For weeks after the Israeli attack in September, neither Israeli nor American officials would talk about the attack, Israel’s first on a nuclear site since the 1981 attack on the Osirak nuclear reactor in Iraq.

When The New York Times published a lengthy account of the Syria attack on Oct. 14, revealing that Israeli and American analysts judged that the target was a partly constructed nuclear reactor, Mr. Bush and the White House refused to answer questions about it. Later, officials said they feared that the Syrians would retaliate against Israel if they felt publicly humiliated.

It is not clear what has changed, apart from the politics of the moment. Mr. Hill’s boss, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, has not voiced strong support for Mr. Hill’s effort to coax the North Koreans along, granting them rewards for steps along the way to compliance with a deal that calls, ultimately, for the country to give up its weapons.

Ms. Rice has been a strong critic of the 1994 agreement between North Korea and the Clinton administration, complaining that it was “front loaded” with rewards for the North.

That is exactly what critics say she and Mr. Hill have done in the most recent agreement. But Mr. Hill has argued in private that the Syrian episode and the uranium enrichment are side shows, and that the critical issue is stopping North Korea from producing more plutonium and giving up what it has. But his State Department colleagues say that he has been told not to defend the deal, or even explain it.

“He’s feeling pretty abandoned by Rice and Bush,” one of his colleagues said Wednesday. Mr. Hill did not respond to messages.

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