Israel wants peace, the US, not so much
An interesting story whose theme has popped up before in the BBC this morning. Syria and Israel are talking through third parties about a peace agreement, one which would include the return of the Golan Heights to Syria.
Israel has passed a message to Syria that it would withdraw from the Golan Heights in return for peace, according to a Syrian government minister.
The expatriates minister, Buthaina Shaaban, said the message had been passed on by Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
. . .
Israeli authorities, for their part, have demanded that Syria abandon its support for Palestinian and Lebanese militant groups before any agreement.
The last peace talks between the two countries broke down in 2000.
The last peace talks broke down in no small part due to US pressure after George Bush was elected president. And look here! The US is suddenly bringing up the Syria/North Korea nuclear link again.
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.
. . .
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."
It is also noted that the site isn't being rebuilt, so the question has to be asked just why the US is suddenly pushing this information out now?
It is, in fact, a bit of a twofer for the neocons. Such speculation on Syria's intentions deflates the chances for peace between it and Israel, plus they have the added benefit of knocking the North Korean talks off-stride; the one place where the Bush administration has at long last actually tried diplomacy and has been at least moderately successful. Which of course undermines neocon arguments about the same kind of tactics being useless against other members of the "axis of evil".
