While 'wartime president' is a title that can be worn with swagger by a sitting leader, a departing one sees peace as a more useful building block for his enduring reputation. Today, much is being discussed in Washington about President Bush's attempt to secure just such a legacy. And no wonder, for the White House plan involves none other than that paragon of peace, liberty and the virtues of responsible regimes: the bountiful nation of North Korea.

Surely Mr Bush's instincts must tell him this is all wrong?

But with Osama bin Laden still on the loose, a debacle in Iraq, trouble in Afghanistan and Iran continuing on its nuclear march, a deal with North Korea over its nuclear programme is at least a deal in hand, so goes the thinking.

Thus, after years of talks that went nowhere, and after, in fact, it raised the ante with a nuclear test, when North Korea presented itself ready to be bought off (again), the White House jumped on this with an eagerness that recalled Chamberlain's return from Munich and of the Clinton administration in 2000.

Although the agreement will see US nuclear experts overseeing the disabling of the Yongbyon nuclear reactor this week, a former Bush administration senior official told me he believed the facility to be past any use to the North Koreans anyway.

Clearly then, the White House has been desperate for something - anything - to call a foreign-policy success.

However, a problem emerged on Sept 6 with an Israeli air strike inside Syria. Today, it is public knowledge that the facility bombed was a nuclear installation at some early stage of construction. But more damaging for the Bush administration, all the signs are that it was of North Korean provenance.

So this should have been a deal-breaker for the Americans. This should have been a chance for instincts to reassert themselves, for questions to emerge over the wisdom of doing a deal with Pyongyang on terms it manoeuvred the Americans into. It should have been a stepping- back point, allowing Mr Bush to extract himself from what promises to be an awful error.

Instead, the deal trundles on. Meanwhile, an astonishingly tight lid has been clamped on the Israeli raid. In more usual circumstances, leaks occur almost immediately from multiple sources. But in this case, no one said anything useful for weeks.

The Israelis knew what they did, of course. But they were not saying. Sure, they had reasons not to go public - in case it riled their neighbours, for instance. Still, a lot of people were involved in the raid, yet there was no loose talk, no leaks, nothing. And the Americans knew too, but they kept their mouths shut. An amazing level of discipline was thus imposed, likely by the Americans in order to not infect the North Korean deal.

Finally, after a report by ABC News on Oct 19 - a month and a half later - a few credible details emerged. First, Israel had suspected Syria of building a nuclear facility. Second, its secret service possibly inserted a spy who managed to obtain detailed photographs of the site. Next, Israel showed its results to the United States, which followed up with satellite pictures and a plan to take out the site. Then, abruptly, Israel heard the White House was not interested in carrying out the raid - leaving the Israelis to decide to go it alone.

Following the raid, other reports indicate that a Syrian delegation travelled to North Korea in the second half of September. Last month, a North Korean group reciprocated. Could this be more than a coincidence?

Just how damaging the existence of the Syrian installation might be to Washington's deal with Pyongyang can be inferred. Very few people have been briefed by the White House about the Israeli raid. Representatives Peter Hoekstra and Ileana Ros-Lehtinen are among them. Together, they wrote an op-ed in The Wall Street Journal that took pains to maintain the letter of their oath of secrecy, while leaving little doubt that what they learned seriously calls into question the deal with North Korea.

Then late last month, Assistant Secretary of State Christopher Hill, given an opportunity at a Capitol Hill hearing to deny any North Korean connection to the Syrian facility, failed to do so. Mr Hill would only say he was 'not in a position to make a 'certification' on this issue', when asked if North Korea had ceased proliferation. And Mr Hill also maintained that he was 'not in a position to confirm or not' a North Korean connection to the Syrian site.

All of this has been read by observers as, in fact, confirmation. For although Mr Hill's interlocutors were demanding to be briefed on the raid, it is likely they had already been given details by colleagues who met White House staff. The grilling Mr Hill endured was meant to back the administration into a corner, thus allowing conclusions to be publicly drawn from what it could not or would not say.

The White House's refusal to come out with what it knows is quickly turning into a farce: an American regime mimicking North Korea's own brand of transparency. Mr Bush might want to trust what his instincts are likely telling him - that any deal Pyongyang so willingly enters into must be suspect.

tionkwa@sph.com.sg

CAUSE FOR SUSPICION

Mr Bush might want to trust what his instincts are likely telling him - that any deal Pyongyang so willingly enters into must be suspect.