뉴욕 타임스가 이틀 전 '지난 9월 이스라엘 공군기가 폭격한 시리아 표적은 건설중이던 핵무기용 북한식 원자로였다'고 보도한 데 대하여 이스라엘쪽에선 '북한이 핵무기용 원자로 건설 기술을 밀수출했을 가능성이 있다'는 관측이 제기되고 있다. 뉴욕타임스에 따르면 이스라엘 국방부 정보본부장 출신인 아론 제비 파르카시 장군은 '북한은 핵개발 기술을 포기하기보다는 시리아에 넘겨주는 방법으로 기술을 보존하고 싶어 했을 수 있다'고 말했다.

즉, 북한이 지난 2월13일 6者 회담에서 약속한대로 핵시설을 전면 폐기하기 전에 시리아에 기술이나 시설을 팔았을 가능성이 있다는 것이다. 이런 核확산은 미국이 가장 우려하는 것이다. 사실로 판명되면 미국은 북한에 대해서 강경한 조치를 취해야 한다. 미국은 6자 회담이 진행중이고 북한이 협조적 자세를 보이는 점을 감안하여 이 문제를 공개적으로 제기하지 않으려 한다. 미국 정보기관은 이스라엘의 폭격이 너무 서둔 점이 있다는 평가를 했으나 이스라엘에선 '핵개발은 초기 단계에서 無力化시키지 않으면 이란처럼 손을 대기가 어렵게 된다'면서 이번 공습을 성공작으로 평가하는 분위기이다.

국제사회의 관심과 대조적인 것은 한국정부와 언론의 이 공습에 대한 무관심이다. 남북관계에 심대한 영향을 끼칠 가능성이 있는 뉴스인데도 강건너 불구경하듯이 작게 취급하고 있다. 自國의 안보를 중국이나 미국에 의존해온 오랜 사대주의 근성이 이런 데서도 나타난다. 국가의 생존과 관련된 중대한 문제에 대해서는 외면하고 사소한 데 목숨 거는 것이 한국 정치와 언론의 생리이다.
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Israel Silent on Reports of Bombing Within Syria

By STEVEN ERLANGER
Published: October 15, 2007
JERUSALEM, Oct. 14 — Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Israeli officials declined Sunday to confirm or deny a report that an Israeli Air Force strike against Syria last month had bombed a partly constructed nuclear reactor of North Korean design.

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Matty Stern/United States Embassy in Tel Aviv
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice meeting Sunday with Prime Minister Ehud Olmert of Israel at his office in Jerusalem.

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Israel Struck Syrian Nuclear Project, Analysts Say (October 14, 2007) The report, published in The New York Times on Saturday, was featured prominently in the Israeli news media on Sunday. But Israeli officials continued their silence about the Sept. 6 airstrike, though they have signaled they are proud of the operation; a senior military official said it had restored “military deterrence” in the region.

Former Israeli officials and intelligence experts would not discuss whether Israel hit a nuclear reactor that was under construction. But they said the report was plausible given their understanding of Syria’s ambitions in the realm of nonconventional weaponry and its longstanding quest for strategic parity with Israel.

Maj. Gen. Aharon Zeevi Farkash, Israel’s former chief of military intelligence, called the notion that Israel had targeted a nuclear reactor in Syria “logical.”

Ms. Rice, flying here from Moscow for four days of talks with Israeli and Palestinian leaders before a regional peace conference in the United States this fall, declined to discuss what she called “news reports” of the Israeli raid, though she did express concern about proliferation.

“We’re very concerned about any evidence of, any indication of, proliferation,” she said. “And we’re handling those in appropriate diplomatic channels.”

She also tried to draw a line between nuclear proliferation and the peace process. “The issues of proliferation do not affect the Palestinian-Israeli peace efforts we are making,” she said, warning sides against actions that could derail the peace effort. “This is the time to be extremely careful,” she said.

Ms. Rice met with various Israeli officials, including Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Defense Minister Ehud Barak, hours before Mr. Barak flew to Washington to discuss security cooperation and rocket defense systems. She also met with members of the Olmert government who have been warning the prime minister not to make too many concessions to Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president, on territory, the status of Jerusalem or the fate of refugees.

Ms. Rice played down the idea of a breakthrough on this trip, calling the Israeli-Palestinian talks “a work in progress.” She said she did not expect “that there will be any particular outcome in the sense of breakthroughs on the document” the two sides are trying to negotiate.

Asked about Israeli-Palestinian progress, a senior American official who briefed reporters on Sunday night said, “We’re not even into the second half of the ballgame.” Speaking on the condition of anonymity according to standard diplomatic practice, he added, “I do think this is going to require a lot of hands-on American diplomacy.”

Regarding the Syria strike, General Zeevi Farkash said Hafez al-Assad, Syria’s former president and the father of President Bashar al-Assad, had “long spoken of Syria’s weakness opposite Israel in the realm of air power, technology and ground forces,” and the need for a nonconventional ability, which in the past meant chemical weapons.

But he added that a “constellation of interests” between North Korea and Syria could have led Syria to go “a stage further” in its quest for strategic parity and deterrence, by moving beyond its chemical ability into the nuclear realm, “as Iran is doing.”

Noting the pressure on North Korea to end its nuclear weapons program, the general suggested that smuggling some elements of its program to Syria would have allowed the North “to preserve the knowledge it has accumulated and not just throw it away.”

The Syrian president has acknowledged the Israeli airstrike but has said it was against an unused military building. North Korea has denied any involvement in a nuclear program in Syria.

Uzi Arad, a former head of Mossad, Israel’s intelligence agency, and the national security adviser under former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, said that he did not know what Israel bombed in Syria but that a nuclear reactor was plausible.

North Korea’s route to a nuclear weapon was based on plutonium, he said, adding that “North Korea has the technology, and its approach to life showed that technology was something to be traded.”

Israeli analysts, meanwhile, expressed surprise at reports that some American officials considered the Israeli airstrike to have been premature. Several American and foreign officials have said it would have been years before the Syrians could have used the reactor to produce the spent nuclear fuel that could, through a series of additional steps, be reprocessed into bomb-grade plutonium.

But Emily B. Landau, director of the arms control and regional security program at the Institute for National Strategic Studies at Tel Aviv University, said, “The one lesson that Israel has learned from the Iranian experience is that if you don’t take care of something like this at the very initial stages, you’re going to have a bigger problem later on.”

Isabel Kershner and Steven Lee Myers contributed reporting.

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