Global Security Newswire

The International Atomic Energy Agency has discovered a Syrian facility with a layout that closely hews to a uranium enrichment site blueprint provided to Libya's ousted Qadhafi regime by a one-time prominent nuclear proliferator, suggesting Damascus had once sought a capacity to produce uranium for potential use in nuclear weapons, the Associated Press reported on Tuesday (see GSN, Oct. 31).

Now apparently a cotton processing site, the al-Hasakah facility in northwestern Syria has yielded no indication to U.N. nuclear watchdog officials of involvement in atomic activities. Damascus has replied neither to an IAEA petition for access to the site nor an inquiry on the matter by AP.

A 2006 Kuwaiti news report that Syria was pursuing clandestine atomic efforts in the city prompted the U.N. agency to focus on the site. The Vienna, Austria-based organization methodically scrutinized pictures taken from space of the site amid hints that Abdul Qadeer Khan -- a former top Pakistani nuclear scientist who in 2004 said he had furnished nuclear technology to Iran, Libya and North Korea -- had once had another, previously unknown client. Khan later recanted his admissions (see GSN, Jan. 5).

Overhead images of the complex show it is significantly close in layout to plans for a uranium enrichment site obtained in a Swiss probe of three engineers suspected of assisting Khan's proliferation operation (see GSN, April 27). Libya showed comparable plans after agreeing in 2003 to end its WMD programs (see GSN, March 1).

The arrangement of the Syrian complex is nearly identical to that of the Libyan plans, with a sizable central structure flanked by three additional sites, a former U.N. investigator said. The facility's vehicle garage was also notably similar in layout, according to officials.

The former official said he had viewed no indications that uranium enrichment centrifuges had ever been fielded at the site, now operated by the textile firm Hasakah Spinning.

Observers have long suggested Syria did business with Khan. Damascus informed the U.N. agency it had received Khan on no less than one occasion to deliver addresses on technical matters, the U.N. investigator said. The Los Angeles Times reported on Khan's trip in 2004.

Pakistan's 1998 nuclear detonation prompted a statement of commendation written on government stationery by then-Syrian Deputy Education Minister Muhidin Issa, according to the former U.N. official. The Assad government official in later communications sought collaboration with Khan, including access for Syrian personnel to the Pakistani expert's research complex. Issa later took an administrative position at Arab International University, but he was not available to respond to AP's findings.

Syrian President Bashar Assad in 2007 said he had received a written statement apparently penned by Khan, but added his government provided no reply and did not make contact with the scientist.

Material obtained from Khan would form the basis for Iran's uranium enrichment program, AP reported. Tehran has denied assertions by the United States and other powers that its atomic efforts are geared toward weapons development (see related GSN story, today).

The U.N. nuclear watchdog more than two years ago sought access to the al-Hasakah site, but it has since focused on a long-running investigation of indications that Syria's Dair Alzour facility housed a reactor potentially intended to produce weapon-usable plutonium. Israel bombed the Dair Alzour complex in 2007.

Damascus has maintained the Dair Alzour site was a military installation with no nuclear component.

"What is at stake here is the nuclear history of [the al-Hasakah] facility," said Mark Hibbs, a Berlin-based senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment's Nuclear Policy Program. "People want to know what did they intend to do there, and Syria has provided no information."

"A nuclear weapon would give Syria at least a kind of parity with Israel and some status within the region," Center for Strategic and International Studies analyst Anthony Cordesman said (Butler/Jahn, Associated Press/Google News, Nov. 1).