U.S. says North Korea aided Syrian nuclear activities

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States has concluded that North Korea helped Syria on a covert nuclear program before and after Israel destroyed a suspected reactor in Syria last year, according to a U.S. intelligence document.

"We are convinced, based on a variety of information, that North Korea assisted Syrian covert nuclear activities both before and after the reactor was destroyed," said the document released to reporters on Thursday.

A senior Bush administration official said the United States and Israel had discussed policy options on how to deal with the suspected reactor but that Israel decided to destroy it on its own.

"At the end of the day, Israel made its own decision to take action," the official told reporters.

The official said the Bush administration initially sought to keep the Israeli strike secret because of a fear that its disclosure could increase pressure on Syria to retaliate.

He said the administration believed that risk had decreased and that discussing the matter more openly now could help the multilateral effort to get North Korea to abandon its nuclear programs.

"We are at the point ... where we believe going public will strengthen our negotiators as they try to get an accurate accounting of North Korea's nuclear programs," the official told reporters.

"We believe and hope that it will encourage North Korea to acknowledge its proliferation activity but also to provide a more complete and accurate disclosure of their plutonium activities and their (uranium) enrichment activities as well," the official said.

The document said the United States had come to the conclusion that the suspected Syrian nuclear reactor was all but finished in August.

"Our information supports the following key points: Syria was building a gas-cooled, graphite-moderated reactor that was nearing operational capability in August, 2007," the document said.

"The reactor would have been capable of producing plutonium for nuclear weapons, was not configured to produce electricity and was ill-suited for research."

(Reporting by Arshad Mohammed; editing by Mohammad Zargham)