http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/24/world/middleeast/25iraq.html?_r=1&hp=&oref=slogin&pagewanted=print
April 24, 2008
Sunnis Agree to End Boycott, Rejoin Iraq Government

By JAMES GLANZ
BAGHDAD — Iraq’s largest Sunni bloc has agreed to return to Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki’s cabinet after a boycott that lasted nearly a year, several Sunni leaders said on Thursday, citing a recently passed amnesty law and the Maliki government’s crackdown on Shiite militias as reasons for the move.

The Sunni leaders said they were still working out the details of their return, an indication that the deal could still fall through. But such a return would represent a major political victory for Mr. Maliki in the midst of a military operation that has at times been criticized as poorly planned and fraught with risk. The principal group his security forces have been confronting is the Mahdi Army, a powerful militia led by Moktada al-Sadr, the radical Shiite cleric. Even though Mr. Maliki’s American-backed offensive against elements of the Mahdi Army has frequently stalled and has led to bitter complaints of civilian casualties, the Sunni leaders said that the government had done enough to address their concerns that they had decided to end their boycott.

“Our conditions were very clear, and the government achieved some of them,” said Adnan al-Duleimi, the head of Tawafiq, the largest Sunni bloc in the government. Mr. Duleimi said the achievements included “the general amnesty, chasing down the militias and disbanding them and curbing the outlaws.”

The recently passed amnesty law has already led to the release of many Sunni prisoners, encouraging Sunni parties that the government is serious about enforcing it. And the attacks on Shiite militias have apparently begun to assuage longstanding complaints that only Sunni groups blamed for the insurgency have been the targets of American and Iraqi security forces.

Exactly which ministries will be given to which Sunni politicians is still under negotiation, said Ayad Samarrai, the deputy general secretary of the Iraqi Islamic Party, the largest party within Tawafiq. Among those under consideration are the Ministries of Culture, Planning, Higher Education and Women’s Affairs and the State Ministry for Foreign Affairs, Mr. Samarrai said.

The details are complicated because Ali Baban, who now heads the most powerful of those ministries, the Planning Ministry, was a member of the Sunni bloc but left it in order to stay in his post after the boycott began. Mr. Samarrai said that the most likely arrangement was that Mr. Baban would remain head of the Planning Ministry and that another ministry would be given to the Sunnis.

The list of names that Tawafiq would nominate for the ministries was also still being negotiated within the bloc, Mr. Samarrai said. “Now we are discussing the details,” he said.

The official government television channel, Iraqiya, appeared to confirm the deal, following a meeting between Mr. Maliki and David Miliband, the visiting foreign secretary of Britain. Iraqiya said the prime minister “said that reconciliation has proved a success and all political blocs will return to the government.”

Also on Thursday, court and legal officials said that the capital case against Tariq Aziz, the deputy prime minister of Iraq under Saddam Hussein, would begin next week. The case involves the execution of more than 40 Iraqi merchants in 1992.

A lawyer for Mr. Aziz, Badi Arif, said on Thursday that Mr. Aziz was having unspecified health problems while in prison but that “his morale is high.”

The Bigger Picture in Sadr City
http://www.weeklystandard.com/weblogs/TWSFP/2008/04/the_bigger_picture_with_the_ir.asp

The Iraqi government’s willingness to take on the Mahdi Army in its strongholds in Baghdad, Basra, and elsewhere in the South is perhaps the most significant news story from Iraq this year. In 2006 and 2007, analysts, pundits, military officers, and politicians said the Shia militias--particularly the Mahdi Army, pose the greatest long term threat in Iraq. Now that the Iraqi government has decided to take on the Mahdi Army, the press is fixated on distinct incidences of failure of the Iraqi security forces in their efforts to dislodge the Mahdi Army from their strongholds.
In today's New York Times, Michael Gordon focuses on the desertion of a company of Iraqi soldiers from their outpost in Sadr City. The story is factually accurate. A company of about 80 Iraqi soldiers abandoned their post. They deserted while engaged with the enemy, which is a serious crime during war. This is the main focus of the article.
Yes, Gordon touches on the fact that the Iraqi and U.S. military scrambled to get a unit to replace the company--and succeeded. Gordon briefly mentions the other Iraqi units on the line held. They even “fought hard.” He even recognizes the Iraqi Army is in Sadr City! But these are just one-off statements of little significance to the narrative, which summed up in a single paragraph:
This episode was a blow to the American effort to push the Iraqis into the lead in the struggle to wrest control of parts of Sadr City from the Mahdi Army militia and what Americans and Iraqis say are Iranian-backed groups.
The fact is the Iraqi Army is still inside Sadr City. A security zone has been carved out of 1/3 of the Mahdi Army controlled district. One company broke, the rest fought and seem to have acquitted themselves well, even if they expended plenty of ammunition (note: the Mahdi Army does the same thing).
Gordon also fails to tell us what unit of the Iraqi Army this is. This is important, as some divisions are greener than others. The likelihood here is that this was one of the young brigades from the 11th Division. The 44th Brigade of the 11th Division, which is in Sadr City, went through what is called “Unit Set Fielding”--where a unit is formed and receives its equipment--in December of 2007. The 43rd Brigade went through the training in January of this year. The 11th Division was commissioned to form in November 2007.
How do I know this? DJ Elliott meticulously tracks the formation of the Iraqi Army in his Iraqi Security Forces Order of Battle, which is updated monthly at The Long War Journal. Is it too much to ask the New York Times, with its near limitless resources, to do the same?
The article also misses the wider implications of what is occurring with the Iraqi security forces. In 2006, Iraqi units either refused to go to Baghdad or did not have the logistical capabilities to deploy. Those that did were severely undermanned. In 2007 the logistical and manning issues were largely resolved, but Sadr City remained off limits. In 2008, just three weeks after the Iraqi security forces took on the Mahdi Army in Basra, which sparked fighting in Baghdad, the Iraqi Army is 1/3 of the way into Sadr City. That is the story you are not being told.
Posted by Bill Roggio on April 16, 2008 02:25 PM | Permalink

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/04/08/AR2008040803501_pf.html

Frustrated Senators See No Exit Signs
By Karen DeYoung and Thomas E. Ricks
Washington Post Staff Writers
Wednesday, April 9, 2008; A01

Asked repeatedly yesterday what "conditions" he is looking for to begin substantial U.S. troop withdrawals from Iraq after this summer's scheduled drawdown, Army Gen. David H. Petraeus said he will know them when he sees them. For frustrated lawmakers, it was not enough.

"A year ago, the president said we couldn't withdraw because there was too much violence," said Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.). "Now he says we can't afford to withdraw because violence is down." Asked Sen. Chuck Hagel (R-Neb.): "Where do we go from here?"

Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) said: "I think people want a sense of what the end is going to look like."

But the bottom line was that there was no bottom line. In testimony before the Senate Armed Services and Foreign Relations committees, Petraeus, the top U.S. military commander in Iraq, and U.S. Ambassador Ryan C. Crocker echoed what they said seven months ago in their last update to Congress -- often using similar words. Iraq's armed forces continue to improve, overall levels of violence are lower than they were last year, and political reconciliation is happening, albeit still more slowly than they would like.

"Iraq is hard, and reconciliation is hard," Crocker said in September. Yesterday, he added: "Almost everything about Iraq is hard."

In eight hours of testimony, the two men danced around the question of what constitutes success in Iraq. "As I've explained, again, from a military perspective," Petraeus said wearily as the day drew to a close, ". . . what we want to do is to look at conditions and determine where it is without taking undue risks. This is all about risk."

"We'll look at the circumstances and assess," Crocker said, as he and Petraeus spoke of "battlefield geometry" and "political-military calculus."

What worked in September -- an overall sense of progress that gave the Bush administration additional time to pursue its "surge" policy of sending nearly 30,000 more troops to Iraq -- sparked little enthusiasm this time among lawmakers who had hoped for a brighter light at the end of the tunnel. Much of their frustration appeared to stem from a realization that there was little they could do to affect policy in the administration's final nine months.

Petraeus said he has recommended to President Bush that the planned withdrawal of the five "surge" combat brigades by the end of July be followed by a 45-day hiatus for "consolidation and evaluation." Then, Petraeus said, he would begin "a process of assessment to examine the conditions on the ground" and determine whether to recommend "further reductions as conditions permit."

The scheduled withdrawals, Armed Services Chairman Carl M. Levin (D-Mich.) said dismissively, are "just the next page in a war plan with no exit strategy."

Several Republicans were effusive in their praise for Petraeus, Crocker and the administration's policy. "We are no longer staring into the abyss of defeat," said Sen. John McCain (Ariz.). Instead, the presumed GOP presidential nominee said that "success is within reach."

McCain hedged his bets with other tough questions, but he left it to others to throw their support behind administration policy. "According to some, we should fire you," Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.) told the witnesses. "It sounds like . . . really nothing good has happened in the last year and this is a hopeless endeavor. Well, I beg to differ."

Graham and others opened the door for Petraeus and Crocker to match White House rhetoric on the ongoing threat from al-Qaeda in Iraq and the rising menace of Iran. But while Petraeus noted that the recent Iraqi government offensive in Basra against the Iranian-backed Shiite militia of cleric Moqtada al-Sadr illustrated Tehran's malign influence, Crocker repeated something he said in September: Persian Iran is up to no good in Iraq, but its role there is limited by deep Arab Iraqi antipathy.

Both Petraeus and Crocker described the Basra operation as a positive demonstration of Iraqi sovereignty and military determination, though one with operational flaws.

Petraeus confirmed that Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki had rejected his advice to delay the offensive until Iraqi troops were better prepared.

"There is no question that it could have been better planned," Petraeus said. He agreed that the 1,000 Iraqi army troops and police who either deserted or refused to fight were "a disappointment." But, he added, thousands of others had fought well, particularly in other areas of southern Iraq where simultaneous violence also broke out.

The witnesses also held firm on an issue raised on both sides of the aisle: whether the administration would submit a security agreement it is negotiating with Iraq to the Senate for ratification. Crocker said that the Iraqis intend to submit the accord to their own parliament, but he added that he does not know whether it would require a vote there. "It is our intention," he said, that the pact will be an "executive agreement" not requiring U.S. congressional approval.

But many Republicans joined their Democratic colleagues in decrying the days of open-ended war and an open U.S. checkbook, and in demanding to know what the administration is doing to pressure the Iraqi government and military to take responsibility for its own fate. "We're a generous people," said Sen. John Barrasso (R-Wyo.), "but our patience is not unlimited."

Petraeus and Crocker repeated warnings that al-Qaeda in Iraq, while weakened, remains a threat. But they described an ongoing U.S. troop presence as necessary largely because no one is certain that security gains will endure if U.S. forces leave. The consequences of withdrawal, Crocker said, "could be grave."

But after hours of questions, they acknowledged that they had gotten at least part of the message. The United States was still funding the roughly 90,000 Sunni security volunteers who Maliki's Shiite-dominated government is reluctant to put on its payroll, Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) told Petraeus. "I'm just asking you why you would object to asking [Iraq] to pay for that entire program, given all we are giving them in blood and everything else."

"It is a very fair question," Petraeus responded, "and I think that if there's anything that the ambassador and I will take back to Iraq candidly after this morning's session and this afternoon's is, in fact, to ask those kinds of questions more directly."

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Turkey's Turning Point
Could There Be an Islamic Revolution in Turkey?
By Michael Rubin
Posted: Wednesday, April 23, 2008

ON THE ISSUES
AEI Online
Publication Date: April 23, 2008

This document is available here as an Adobe Acrobat PDF.

A version of this article appeared on National Review Online on April 14, 2008.

April 2008

The name Fethullah Gülen is virtually unknown in the United States. Self-exiled here for more than a decade, this prominent Turkish theological and political thinker is the leader of a movement estimated conservatively to have more than a million followers in Turkey. The movement controls a business empire of charities, real estate, companies, and schools. Thousands of Gülen's followers populate Turkey's bureaucracies. AEI's Michael Rubin believes that, just as many people remained clueless or belittled concerns about Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini's intentions in Iran thirty years ago, many may be making the same mistake today about Gülen, who professes to want to weld Islam with tolerance and a pro-European outlook. Rubin introduces us to a man who could play a prominent role in Turkey's future at a time when Turkey's "secular order and constitutionalism have never been so shaky."

Few U.S. policymakers have heard of Fethullah Gülen, perhaps Turkey's most prominent theologian and political thinker. Self-exiled for more than a decade, Gülen lives a reclusive life outside Philadelphia, Pa. Within months, however, he may be as much a household name in the United States as is Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, a man who was as obscure to most Americans up until his triumphant return to Iran almost thirty years ago.

Many academics and journalists embrace Gülen and applaud his stated vision welding Islam with tolerance and a pro-European outlook. Supporters describe him as progressive. In 2003, the University of Texas honored him as a "peaceful hero," alongside Martin Luther King Jr., Mahatma Gandhi, and the Dalai Lama. Last October, the British House of Lords and several British diplomats celebrated Gülen at a high-profile London conference. Later this year, Georgetown University scholar John Esposito will host a conference dedicated to the movement. As in 2001, Esposito will cosponsor with the Rumi Forum, an organization Gülen serves as honorary president.

When Islamists pursue campaigns of hatred, Western officials not only pretend nothing is amiss, but also often increase their support.

The Gülen movement controls charities, real estate, companies, and more than a thousand schools internationally. According to some estimates, it controls several billion dollars. The movement claims its own universities, unions, lobbies, student groups, radio and television stations, and the Zaman newspaper. Turkish officials concede that Gülen's followers in Turkey number more than a million; Gülen's backers claim that number is just the tip of the iceberg. Today, Gülen members dominate the Turkish police and divisions within the interior ministry. Under the stewardship of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, one of Gülen's most prominent sympathizers, tens of thousands of other Gülen supporters have entered the Turkish bureaucracy.

While Gülen supporters jealously guard his image in the West, he remains a controversial figure in Turkey. According to Cumhuriyet, a left-of-center establishment daily--Turkey's New York Times in 1973--the Izmir State Security Court convicted Gülen of "attempting to destroy the state system and to establish a state system based on religion"; he received a pardon, though, and so never served time in prison. In 1986, the Turkish military--the constitutional guardians of the state's secularism--purged a Gülen cell from the military academy; the Turkish military has subsequently acted against a number of other alleged Gülen cells that they say infiltrated military ranks.

In 1998, according to Turkish court transcripts cited in the Turkish Daily News, Gülen urged followers in the judiciary and state bureaucracy to "work patiently to take control of the state." The following year, the independent Turkish television station ATV broadcast a secretly taped Gülen telling supporters, "If they . . . come out early, the world will squash their heads. They will make Muslims relive events in Algeria," a reference to the Islamic Salvation Front's overwhelming 1991 election victory in the North African state. After party leaders spoke of voiding the constitution and implementing Islamic law, the Algerian military staged a coup leading to a civil conflict that killed tens of thousands.

Because of his statements and veiled threats, the judiciary in 1998 charged Gülen with trying to "undermine the secular system" while "camouflag[ing] his methods with a democratic and moderate image." Convicted in absentia but free to run his organization from his U.S. exile, Gülen continues a rather inconsistent approach to tolerance and secularism. He often equates the separation of religion and state with atheism, an assertion many of Turkey's most secular officials find offensive: believing that religion is best kept to the individual rather than state sphere does not equate a lack of belief in God. In 2004, Gülen equated atheism with terrorism and said both atheists and murderers would spend eternity in hell.

Gülen has received a legal break, however. In 2002, Erdoğan's Justice and Development Party (AKP) won a plurality in parliamentary elections and, because of a fluke in Turkish election law, was able to amplify one-third of the popular vote into a two-thirds parliamentary majority. Erdoğan used this advantage to enact reforms that had the net effect of stacking not only the civil service, but also banking boards and the judiciary with his political supporters and religious fundamentalists. Erdoğan's judges wasted no time. They placed liens against political opponents' property; seized independent newspapers and television stations, including, not by coincidence, ATV; and assigned sympathetic judges to hear appeals against earlier decisions levied against Islamists. On May 5, 2006, the Ankara Criminal Court overturned the verdict against Gülen. While a public prosecutor--a secularist holdout--appealed the court's action, the process is now nearing conclusion. Gülen's supporters are ecstatic. His slate wiped clean, Gülen has indicated he may soon return to Turkey.

If he does, Istanbul 2008 may very well look like Tehran 1979. Just as Gülen's supporters affirm his altruistic intentions and see no inconsistency between a secretive, cell-based movement and transparent governance, too many Western journalists also give Gülen a free pass.

Never again should the United States abandon its ideological compatriots for the ephemeral promises of parties that use religion to subvert democracy and seek mob rather than constitutional rule.

If this sounds familiar, it should: three decades ago, the same phenomenon marked coverage of Iran. "I don't want to be the leader of the Islamic Republic; I don't want to have the government or power in my hands," Khomeini told a credulous Austrian television reporter during the ayatollah's brief sojourn in Paris. In November 1978, Steven Erlanger, the future New York Times foreign correspondent, penned a New Republic essay arguing that Khomeini's vision for Iran was essentially a "Platonic Republic with a grand ayatollah as a philosopher-king" and predicting the triumph of an independent liberal left worried more about labor conditions in Iran's oil fields than pursuing any theological tendency.

In Tehran then as in Ankara now, U.S. ambassadors preferred garden parties with the political elite and maintained contacts with only a narrow segment of the population. They were blind. As the State Department and Central Intelligence Agency remained clueless or belittled concerns about Khomeini's intentions, millions of Iranians turned out to greet their imam at Tehran's international airport. Turks now say that similar crowds might greet Gülen when his plane touches down in Istanbul.

Gülen is careful. He will not order the dissolution of the Turkish Republic. But ensconced in his Istanbul mansion, he could simply begin to issue fatwas prying Turkey farther from the secularism to which Erdoğan pays lip service. As Khomeini consciously drew parallels between himself and Twelver Shiism's Hidden Imam, Gülen will remain quiet as his supporters paint his return as evidence that the caliphate formally dissolved by Mustafa Kemal Atatürk in 1924 has been restored.

The secular order and constitutionalism in Turkey have never been so shaky. The government now controls most television and radio stations. Erdoğan has gained the dubious distinction of launching more lawsuits against journalists and commentators than any previous Turkish prime minister.

As Erdoğan discourages dissent, his and Gülen's supporters among prominent Turkish columnists and commentators equate Islamism with democracy and secularism with fascism--a line too many Western diplomats eager to demonstrate tolerance with an embrace of "moderate Islam" accept. Erdoğan himself has argued that it was secularism that led to Hitler and that Islamism would never produce such a result.

Last month, after one of the few independent judicial authorities filed a lawsuit against Erdoğan and the AKP for violating constitutional provisions separating religion from politics, the prime minister responded with a midnight roundup of leading academics and journalists who had criticized him. Even Erdoğan's supporters were shocked to wake up on March 21 to learn that İlhan Selçuk, the bedridden octogenarian editor-in-chief of Cumhuriyet described by Turks as their Walter Cronkite had been arrested in a predawn raid on charges of plotting to launch a military coup; the police have yet to provide any evidence. Nor is Selçuk the only victim in the most recent intimidation campaign. A Hürriyet columnist, Ahmet Hakan, has received threatening phone calls from lawyer Kemaletin Gülen, a relative of Fethullah.

When Islamists pursue campaigns of hatred, Western officials not only pretend nothing is amiss, but also, as in the case of Palestinian leaders, often increase their support. This week, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice will address the judicial case against Erdoğan and the AKP. Members of her staff suggest she will lend subtle support to the prime minister. Indeed, it may be tempting to condemn the court action as a political stunt: the prosecutor's legal brief is shoddily written and poorly argued. Despite its faults, however, the underlying legal issues are real.

Rice should be silent. Any interference will backfire: Turks, already upset that U.S. ambassador Ross Wilson seldom meets with opposition leaders, will interpret any criticism of the case as White House support for the AKP. Secularists will ask why Turkey's liberal opposition should not have the right to all legal remedies. They already ask why the West applauds legal action taken against Austrian populist Jörg Haider and French demagogue Jean-Marie Le Pen, but the same U.S. and European officials appear to bless Erdoğan's legal exceptionalism. By undermining judicial recourse, Rice may accelerate violence and lend support to those who argue--wrongly--that the government's disdain for the law and constitution should be met with the same. On the off chance, however, that Rice accepts that the court case should run its course, Turkey's religious conservatives will accuse her of masterminding the approach.

Over the past seven years, the Bush administration has made many mistakes. Bush was correct to recognize the importance of democratization; bungled implementation has turned a noble ideal into a dirty word. By equating democracy only with elections, the State Department and the National Security Council fumbled U.S. interests in Iraq, Gaza, and Lebanon. One man, one vote, once; parties that enforce discipline at the point of a gun; and politicians who seek to subvert the rule of law to an imam's conception of God do little for U.S. national security. Never again should the United States abandon its ideological compatriots for the ephemeral promises of parties that use religion to subvert democracy and seek mob rather than constitutional rule. Turkey is nearing the cliff. Please, Secretary Rice, do not push it over the edge.

Michael Rubin is a resident scholar at AEI.

This document is available here as an Adobe Acrobat PDF.

N. Koreans Taped At Syrian Reactor
Video Played a Role in Israeli Raid
By Robin Wright
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, April 24, 2008; A01

A video taken inside a secret Syrian facility last summer convinced the Israeli government and the Bush administration that North Korea was helping to construct a reactor similar to one that produces plutonium for North Korea's nuclear arsenal, according to senior U.S. officials who said it would be shared with lawmakers today.

The officials said the video of the remote site, code-named Al Kibar by the Syrians, shows North Koreans inside. It played a pivotal role in Israel's decision to bomb the facility late at night last Sept. 6, a move that was publicly denounced by Damascus but not by Washington.

Sources familiar with the video say it also shows that the Syrian reactor core's design is the same as that of the North Korean reactor at Yongbyon, including a virtually identical configuration and number of holes for fuel rods. It shows "remarkable resemblances inside and out to Yongbyon," a U.S. intelligence official said. A nuclear weapons specialist called the video "very, very damning."

Nuclear weapons analysts and U.S. officials predicted that CIA Director Michael V. Hayden's planned disclosures to Capitol Hill could complicate U.S. efforts to improve relations with North Korea as a way to stop its nuclear weapons program. They come as factions inside the administration and in Congress have been battling over the merits of a nuclear-related deal with North Korea.

Syrian Ambassador Imad Moustapha yesterday angrily denounced the U.S. and Israeli assertions. "If they show a video, remember that the U.S. went to the U.N. Security Council and displayed evidence and images about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. I hope the American people will not be as gullible this time around," he said.

U.S. officials said that Israel shared the video with the United States before the Sept. 6 bombing, after Bush administration officials expressed skepticism last spring that the facility, visible by satellite since 2001, was a nuclear reactor built with North Korea's assistance. Israel has a nuclear weapons arsenal that it has never declared.

But beginning today, intelligence officials will tell members of the House and Senate intelligence, armed services and foreign relations committees that the Syrian facility was not yet fully operational and that there was no uranium for the reactor and no indication of fuel capability, according to U.S. officials and intelligence sources.

David Albright, president of Institute for Science and International Security (ISIS) and a former U.N. weapons inspector, said the absence of such evidence warrants skepticism that the reactor was part of an active weapons program.

"The United States and Israel have not identified any Syrian plutonium separation facilities or nuclear weaponization facilities," he said. "The lack of any such facilities gives little confidence that the reactor is part of an active nuclear weapons program. The apparent lack of fuel, either imported or indigenously produced, also is curious and lowers confidence that Syria has a nuclear weapons program."

U.S. intelligence officials will also tell the lawmakers that Syria is not rebuilding a reactor at the Al Kibar site. "The successful engagement of North Korea in the six-party talks means that it was unlikely to have supplied Syria with such facilities or nuclear materials after the reactor site was destroyed," Albright said. "Indeed, there is little, if any, evidence that cooperation between Syria and North Korea extended beyond the date of the destruction of the reactor."

The timing of the congressional briefing is nonetheless awkward for the Bush administration's diplomatic initiative to persuade North Korea to abandon its nuclear program and permanently disable the reactor at Yongbyon. The CIA's hand was forced, officials said, because influential lawmakers had threatened to cut off funding for the U.S. diplomatic effort unless they received a full account of what the administration knew.

Also, the terms of a tentative U.S.-North Korean deal require that North Korean officials acknowledge U.S. evidence about its help with the Syrian program, and so the disclosures to Congress are meant to preempt what North Korea may eventually say.

Following talks with the South Korean president last weekend, President Bush said that it was premature to make a judgment about whether North Korea was willing to follow through with a commitment to publicly declare its nuclear-related programs, materials and facilities.

Washington and Pyongyang still differ over what should be included in that declaration, a State Department official said. Sung Kim, the State Department director of the Office of Korean Affairs, is in Pyongyang for discussions about the contents.

Syria's top envoy to Washington said the CIA briefings were meant to undermine diplomatic efforts with North Korea, not to confront Syria. Why, Moustapha said, are "they repeating the same lies and fabrications when they were planning to attack Iraq? The reason is simple: It's about North Korea, not Syria. The neoconservative elements are having the upper hand."

He added, "We do not want to plan to acquire nuclear technology as we understand the reality of this world and have seen what the U.S. did to Iraq even when it did not have a nuclear program. So we are not going to give them a pretext to attack Syria."

Before the site was bombed, the facility included a tall, boxy structure like those used to house gas-graphite reactors and was located seven miles north of the desert village of At Tibnah in the Dayr az Zawr region, 90 miles from the Iraqi border, according to photographs released by the ISIS, a nonprofit research group.

The White House and the CIA declined to comment on the briefings.