Congressional calculus triggered Syria disclosures

By Arshad Mohammed - Analysis

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - If President George W. Bush wants to make progress on ending North Korea's nuclear ambitions before he leaves office next year, he first has to close the deal with Congress.

The White House took a step to try to win congressional support on Thursday by laying out intelligence alleging that North Korea helped Syria to build a nuclear reactor that U.S. officials say was destroyed by Israel on September 6.

The White House initially tried to keep the matter secret, fearing Damascus might be embarrassed by a public airing of the strike -- and the fact that Israeli jets apparently came and went unscathed -- and would be tempted to retaliate.

So it briefed only 22 U.S. lawmakers about the matter last year and it refused to comment even after The New York Times reported in mid-October that the Israeli strike had targeted a nuclear reactor.

Over time, the White House judged that the risk of Syrian retaliation against Israel, which is widely believed to have the Middle East's only nuclear arsenal, had receded.

Also, the administration has come under growing pressure from Congress to more widely share the information so that lawmakers will back, or at least not block, its efforts to end North Korea's nuclear programs.

Under an agreement reached in September 2005, the poor, communist state committed to abandon all nuclear weapons and programs in return for economic and diplomatic benefits.

The so-called six-party agreement was hammered out among the two Koreas, China, Japan, Russia and the United States.

The agreement has been bogged down by North Korea's failure to produce a declaration of its nuclear programs that was due at the end of last year.

In return, Washington is to drop two sets of U.S. sanctions stemming from Pyongyang's presence on the U.S. state sponsors of terrorism list and the U.S. Trading With the Enemy Act.

"NO CHOICE"

"Congress has been asking for the specifics on Syria before they would agree to any sanctions lifting," said Mike Green, a former Bush administration Asia specialist now at the CSIS think tank. "The administration had no choice but to brief."

The U.S. Congress holds sway over whether to provide money to the administration to dismantle North Korean nuclear sites and it could also block removing the country from the U.S. terrorism list.

Heritage Foundation Korea expert Bruce Klingner said the intelligence briefings partly reflected the administration's realization that they were otherwise "unlikely to get funding" to dismantle North Korea's nuclear facility at Yongbyon.

Several people familiar with the matter say Washington has devised a face-saving formula for North Korea under which it would produce a declaration of its plutonium program, but would simply "acknowledge" U.S. concerns about its suspected uranium enrichment and proliferation activities, including in Syria.