Washington: US charges that North Korea helped Syria build a nuclear reactor could wreck a six-party agreement in which the hardline state agreed to end its nuclear weapons drive, lawmakers said today.

The lawmakers from the House of Representatives Intelligence Committee spoke after being briefed by CIA officials behind closed doors on claims that North Korea helped Syria build the atomic reactor at a site destroyed by an Israeli raid in September.

Committee chairman Sylvestre Reyes of the Democratic Party and the top Republican on the panel, Representative Pete Hoekstra, were fuming that President George W. Bush's administration took eight months since the Israeli strike to brief the full panel on the issue.

"By waiting so long to be briefing the intelligence committee and other committees on the (Capitol) Hill, the administration has made it much more difficult that if they do reach some kind of an agreement with the six-party talks, it will be much harder for them to go through the Congress and get these agreements approved," Hoekstra said.

This was "because they have really damaged the relationship between Congress and the administration. That's a big disappointment but I think that's something that we heard consistently from all of our members today," he said.

Source : PTI