Global Security Newswire

The United States and key West European powers have questioned whether Syria should receive international assistance to study its nuclear power options while the nation is under suspicion of having covert atomic activities, Reuters reported Friday (see GSN, Nov. 14).

The International Atomic Energy Agency's governing board later this month is scheduled to consider eight "technical cooperation" projects in Syria. One would involve a "technical and economic feasibility study and site selection" for a nuclear power plant, according to agency documents. The project would receive $350,000 in funding through 2011.

U.S., British and French officials, however, have raised questions about supporting the proposal while the agency is investigating whether Damascus had begun building a secret nuclear plant that was destroyed by Israel last year. Months after the attack, U.S. intelligence officials presented evidence that the facility had been a nearly operational reactor designed with North Korean assistance to produce plutonium for nuclear weapons.

At a meeting of Western officials last week, "eyebrows were raised and questions were posed about the timeline for this power plant study, whether it's premature before other issues are resolved," according to one European diplomat.

"There was some question as to whether it would be appropriate first to assess Syria's energy needs," added another European diplomat (Mark Heinrich, Reuters, Nov. 14).

The IAEA investigation into the bombed facility took an interesting turn last week after diplomats revealed that agency laboratories had detected uranium in samples taken from from the site during a June inspection (see GSN, Nov. 11).

Agency chief Mohamed ElBaradei confirmed those findings today while pleading for time to complete the investigation, Agence France-Presse reported.

"There was uranium, but [that] doesn't mean there was a reactor," he told reporters in Dubai. "It's not highly enriched uranium."

ElBaradei said that "we need more cooperation from Syria. ... We also need cooperation from Israel."

He said he would issue a formal report later this week (Agence France-Presse/Spacewar.com, Nov. 17).

The agency's 35-nation board has generally not meddled in technical cooperation requests, preferring to keep those agency functions as apolitical as possible, but two years ago, it faced similar questions about some efforts in Iran. The board ultimately decided to reject some project requests, deeming them inappropriate given that Tehran faced U.N. sanctions for its refusal to curb its nuclear ambitions and for resisting agency efforts to understand Iran's past activities (see GSN, Nov. 27, 2006; Greg Webb, Global Security Newswire, Nov. 17).