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Syrian ambassador to the US, Imad Moustapha (file)
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| By Israel Insider staff September 17, 2007 |
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Syria vehemently denied accusations by senior officials and top analysts that it was harboring nuclear material from North Korea, according to local press reports. News outlets and officials speculate that the alleged Israeli foray into Syrian airspace was actually an air strike on nascent nuclear facilities, which an Israeli source said Syria was planning as a "devastating surprise."
In an interview to Newsweek, Syrian ambassador to the US Imad Moustapha called the reports "absolutely, totally, fundamentally ridiculous and untrue," according to Haaretz.
"There are no nuclear North Korean-Syrian facilities whatsoever in Syria," Moustapha insisted.
The Syrian ambassador to the United Nations, Bashar Ja'afari, dismissed earlier claims by The New York Times on Wednesday that the likely targets were weapons caches Israel believed Iran was sending to Hezbollah via Syria.
"This is blah blah. This is nonsense. This is an unfounded statement. It is not up to the Israelis or anyone else to assess what we have in Syria," said Ja'afari.
"There was no target, they dropped their munitions. They were running away after they were confronted by our air defense," he added.
The North Koreans echoed Syria's rejections of the claim that Israel's reported flyover was a targeted attack on illegally smuggled arms or nuclear facilities.
"They often say things that are groundless," the South Korean news agency Yonhap quoted deputy chief of the North Korean mission to the United Nations Kim Myong-gil as saying, the Jerusalem Post reported.
Meanwhile, the government-owned Syrian daily Al-Thawra said that insinuations by the US of nuclear cooperation between North Korea and Syria could be an attempt by the US to create a reason for future hostility against the Muslim country.
Al-Thawra predicted that more accusations could well be on their way. "The magnitude of these false accusations might be a prelude to a new aggression against Syria," al-Thawra daily said.
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