US Vice President Dick Cheney said Thursday that North Korea helped Syria build a reactor at a site that Israel suspected of being a nuclear installation and bombed in 2007.
In an interview with The Associated Press, in his West Wing office, Cheney outlined reasons North Korea remains a trouble spot that President-elect Barack Obama will have to address. He says the communist regime has its own nuclear ambitions, for instance, and "helped the Syrians build a nuclear reactor."
The White House has alleged North Korean involvement before, but top Bush administration officials have said little publicly on the issue, which is still being investigated by the U.N. nuclear watchdog agency.
After Obama takes the oath of office on Jan. 20, the 67-year-old Cheney plans to possibly write a book and spend time with his wife, Lynne, their two daughters and six grandchildren. He and his wife will split their time between their house in Virginia and their hometown of Casper, Wyo.
Cheney is leaving the White House after a government career that spans four decades, including stints as defense secretary, President Gerald R. Ford's chief of staff and a longtime congressman from Wyoming