Израел призна дека нападна цели во Сирија

[Misirkov]

Izrael ja stopira celosnata cenzura na vestite za najnoviot avionski napad na celi vo Sirija. Pred toa da go stori, pronajdeni bea dodatni rezervoari za gorivo na izraelskite voeni avioni koi se stavaat koga tie odat da napagjaat na dolgi relacii (a potoa se otfrlaat). Ostanuva oprashanjeto shto unishtile izraelskite avioni vo Sirija i od kade napadnale (so ogled na toa deka koristele takvi rezervoari).

October 3, 2007

JERUSALEM -- Easing a news blackout, Israel acknowledged Tuesday that its air force had struck an unspecified military target deep inside Syria last month.

But the military censor's office continued to bar Israeli media from disclosing other information about the Sept. 6 raid, including the target, the forces that took part and the degree of the mission's success.

Everything about the operation, sketchily reported by the state-run Syrian Arab News Agency hours after it happened but then denied by Syrian officials, has been a tightly held secret in Israel. Reports in foreign media quoting unidentified U.S. officials have speculated that Israel attacked a weapons shipment destined for Hezbollah guerrillas in Lebanon or a nuclear facility built with North Korean technology.

Israeli media were permitted to cite foreign reports of the airstrike, but a special directive prohibited them from disclosing anything learned on their own. The aim was to allow Syrian leaders and their allies to pretend nothing had happened and so avoid pressure to retaliate.

Tuesday's clearance to report officially that the raid had taken place came from the Israeli censor's office a day after Syrian President Bashar Assad gave his government's first official acknowledgment of the airstrike in a televised interview with the British Broadcasting Corp.

Assad said Israeli warplanes attacked "an unused military building."

That contradicted previous accounts by Syrian officials that Israeli planes had merely intruded into Syrian airspace, met antiaircraft fire and dumped fuel tanks while scrambling back to Israel.

Speaking fluent English and appearing relaxed as he sat with the interviewer in Damascus, the Syrian capital, Assad said the airstrike demonstrated Israel's "visceral antipathy toward peace" and vowed that Syria would make the Jewish state pay.

"Retaliate doesn't mean missile for missile and bomb for bomb," he said. "We have our means to retaliate, maybe politically, maybe in other ways. But we have the right to retaliate in different means."

Clearly the incident gave Syrians a jolt.

"It's purely aggressive and very dangerous," said Mounir Ali, a spokesman for Syria's Ministry of Information.

While keeping details of the raid secret, Israeli officials have hinted obliquely at possible motives. Gideon Frank, deputy chairman of the Israel Atomic Energy Commission, warned delegates at the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna last month that Israel could not ignore the efforts of various Middle Eastern countries to develop weapons of mass destruction and the means to deliver them.

Syria has denied receiving North Korean nuclear help and shipping arms to Hezbollah. North Korea, which provides missile technology to Syria, has denied giving nuclear assistance.

If the Israelis had struck a nuclear site, "there would have been heavy antiaircraft guns around, soldiers, radiation, scientists," Ali said. "But they didn't even kill a goat."

According to a Western diplomat in Damascus, Syrian Foreign Minister Walid Moallem summoned delegates from European embassies days after the raid to hand them photographs purportedly proving that the Israelis had struck nothing.

But the diplomat, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the photos showed only a fighter aircraft's empty fuel tanks with Hebrew lettering.

"We didn't get pictures of the actual target," the diplomat said.

On Sunday, the Arab Center for the Studies of Arid Zones and Dry Lands, a Damascus-based organization funded by the Arab League, rejected a claim by the Israeli newspaper Yediot Aharonot that the site targeted in the raid was a military research facility. The site pictured in the newspaper is a building used for training agricultural scientists, the organization said.

Syria and Israel have been formally at war since the 1967 Middle East War, during which the Jewish state captured the Golan Heights from the Syrians. Peace talks collapsed in 2000 over the scope of a proposed Israeli pullout from the plateau.

In the BBC interview, which was broadcast in full Tuesday, Assad said Syria would not accept a U.S. invitation to a Middle East peace conference planned for next month unless the agenda included a revival of talks about the Golan Heights.

 

[Misirkov]

Znachi sega i oficijalno potvrdeno deka Izrael unishti nedovrshen nuklearen reaktor vo severna Sirija - Diar az Zavar. Nuklearniot reaktor shto se gradel e istiot kako shto go ima Severna Koreja so koj Sirija sakala da proizveduva plutonium. Indikativno e deka e vo napadot se ubieni eden broj specijalisti od Severna Koreja koi bile vo Sirija ja pomagaat negovata izgradba.

Otprvin SAD bile protiv takov napad i izrazile somnevanje deka se raboti za nuklearen reaktor. Shodno, izraelskite komandosi dobile zadacha da vlezat vo kompleksot vo Sirija i da zemat primeroci od nuklearni materijali shto tie uspeshno go napravile.

ISRAELI RAID HIT SYRIAN NUCLEAR REACTOR

October 14, 2007

Imre Karacs

THE mysterious Israeli air raid on Syria last month targeted a partly constructed nuclear reactor, it was reported yesterday.

As The Sunday Times revealed exclusively last month, Israeli jets bombed a compound near Dayr az-Zwar in northern Syria on September 6 after commandos seized nuclear material of North Korean origin.

Citing American and foreign officials with access to intelligence material, The New York Times reports today that the Israeli jets destroyed a reactor apparently modelled on one in North Korea used for producing weapons-grade plutonium at its Yongbyon site.

Diplomats said a number of North Korean technicians were killed in the attack.

The newspaper said it was unclear how far advanced the Syrian nuclear facility was, although it quoted officials as saying that the reactor might have been years from completion.

The raid by Israeli F15Is on the suspected nuclear facility echoed an attack in 1981 on an Iraqi reactor at Osirak, thwarting Saddam Hussein in his ambition to develop the bomb.

However, evidence of Syrian intentions this time was much more ambiguous, with many American politicians doubting the urgency of any action against the Dayr az-Zwar plant. The New York Times account confirms splits about the issue within the administration of President George W Bush.

As The Sunday Times reported on September 23, Israel had been surveying the Syrian site for months and had tried to draw Washington’s attention to intelligence reports suggesting that the Syrians were collaborating with North Korea’s nuclear technicians.

US officials said the partially constructed Syrian reactor was identified earlier this year in satellite photographs, but implied that American intelligence had missed their significance until Israel pointed them out.

The pictures did not convince Washington, however. American opposition to Israeli plans to destroy the plant were led by Condoleezza Rice, the US secretary of state. She persuaded the Israelis to postpone their attack, originally scheduled during the week of July 14, until proof was obtained.

In a daring raid, Israeli commandos infiltrated the compound, seized nuclear samples and took them back to Israel for scientific analysis. The “jaw-dropping evidence” was presented to US officials and Ehud Barak, Israel’s defence minister, ordered the air strike.

The newspaper says it still remains unclear how far Syria had advanced with the plant before the attack, what role North Korea might have played and whether Damascus could argue that the facility was intended to produce electricity.

American officials say that, either way, Syria would have needed several years before the reactor could produce weapons grade nuclear material.

Analysts also disagree on whether the reactor was being built to enrich uranium � the Iranian route to nuclear power, or to reprocess spent fuel into plutonium, the avenue chosen by North Korea.

All Israel has confirmed so far is that it carried out an air strike on Syria. Both countries have given little information on the target and details of the raid have been under tight wraps in both Washington and Israel, restricted to a handful of officials. Israeli media have been barred from publishing information about it.

A senior Israeli official told the newspaper, however, that the attack was intended to “reestablish the credibility of our deterrent power”.

The newspaper reported that Dick Cheney, the US vice-president, and other hawkish members of the administration argued that the same intelligence that prompted Israel’s attack on the reactor had strengthened the case for reviewing negotiations with North Korea over its nuclear programme.

Cheney also wanted the administration to adopt a tougher stance against Syria.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/middle_east/article2654213.ece