A senior American official said Friday that Syria was on the U.S. nuclear "watch list,'' asserting that foreign technicians were in the country and that there had been possible contacts with suppliers for nuclear equipment.
Andrew Semmel, acting deputy assistant secretary for nuclear nonproliferation policy, did not name the suppliers, but said there were North Koreans in Syria and that he could not exclude the possiblity that the network run by the disgraced Pakistan nuclear scientist A.Q. Khan was involved.
Semmel was responding to questions about an Israeli airstrike in northern Syria last week.
The Washington Post reported Thursday that Israel had gathered satellite imagery showing possible North Korean cooperation with Syria on a nuclear facility. Semmel said Syria was certainly on the U.S. "watch list.''
"There are indicators that they do have something going on there,'' he said, according to the AP. "We do know that there are a number of foreign technicians that have been in Syria. We do know that there may have been contact between Syria and some secret suppliers for nuclear equipment. Whether anything transpired remains to be seen.''
"So good foreign policy, good national security policy, would suggest that we pay very close attention to that,'' he said. "We're watching very closely. Obviously, the Israelis were watching very closely.''
Asked if the suppliers could have been North Koreans, he said: "There are North Korean people there. There's no question about that. Just as there are a lot of North Koreans in Iraq and Iran.''
