WASHINGTON, April 24: The White House and the CIA told key lawmakers in secret on Thursday that North Korea helped Syria build a nuclear reactor at a site destroyed by an Israeli raid in September.

Washington also took its case to the UN nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), alleging that Damascus had violated its obligations under the 1970 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, a US official said.

In Congress, top US officials laid out the charges -- which Syria flatly denied -- behind closed doors in a video presentation that includes photographs of the facility, a top US official said.

Another US official said the reactor could have produced plutonium, potentially to feed nuclear weapons, but was destroyed before it ever began to operate.

Syria denounced the charges, with its ambassador to the United States pointedly linking the supposed US evidence to Washington’s weapons-of-mass-destruction case for invading Iraq.

The allegations were certain to roil six-country diplomatic efforts to get North Korea to come clean on its nuclear and proliferation activities and abandon its atomic ambitions in return for diplomatic and economic rewards.

They could also have dramatic repercussions for Syria, an ally of Iran, and a frequent target of fierce US criticism over its influence in Lebanon and charges of letting Islamist fighters into Iraq.

The briefing highlighted “a serious proliferation issue both in the Middle East and the country that may be involved in Asia”, Representative Pete Hoekstra said.

And he said Pyongyang had to answer the US allegations before it could be removed from a blacklist of “state sponsors of terrorism”.

“We would expect to have good, clear, verifiable information from the countries that are involved before steps like that would be taken by the administration,” Hoekstra, the top Republican on the House Intelligence Committee, told reporters.

White House officials declined to discuss the impact of the revelations on the North Korean diplomacy, or to restate President George Bush’s repeated warnings that he viewed any such activities by North Korea as “a grave threat” with ominous “consequences”.

They also sidestepped questions on whether the alleged activities needed to be included in a formal “declaration” that North Korea had been due to provide by Dec 31 of last year, but is still the subject of hard-fought negotiations.

Mr Bush, who is eager for a final resolution of the nuclear crisis before he leaves office in January, was not expected to comment publicly, and the White House offered only spare information.—AFP