Global Security Newswire

U.N. nuclear inspectors have vindicated U.S. claims that Syria was constructing a covert nuclear reactor before the site was destroyed last year, the Bush administration's envoy to the International Atomic Energy Agency said today (see GSN, Nov. 19).

Agency Director General Mohamed ElBaradei circulated a report Wednesday stating that the alleged facility closely resembled a nuclear reactor and had related infrastructure that would be typical for an atomic plant. In addition, agency inspectors found significant amounts of processed uranium in June.

An Israeli air attack destroyed the facility 14 months ago, and Syria quickly razed the site and erected a new structure, drawing Western concerns of a literal cover-up. U.S. intelligence officials in April released evidence, including photographs purportedly from the interior of the building, that the structure was a plutonium production reactor. Damascus has countered that the site was a non-nuclear military installation.

ElBaradei began his investigation when the United States released some its intelligence data, but this week's report was based other evidence, not on the photos released by Washington, a senior official close the agency said Wednesday.

"The director general's report reinforces the assessment of my government that Syria was secretly building a nuclear reactor in its eastern desert," U.S. Ambassador Gregory Schulte said today in a statement. "The report sharply contradicts a number of Syria’s claims and catalogs Syria’s repeated refusal to answer IAEA questions."

Schulte urged Syria to cooperate with ElBaradei's continuing investigation.

"The IAEA needs to understand what Syria was building in secret then buried under meters of earth and a new building. The IAEA also needs to be confident that there are no other undeclared activities in Syria," he said.

Schulte expressed hope that the investigation would not mirror the agency's five-year struggle to document Iran's past nuclear activities, a process that has been fraught with delays.

"Syria is not Iran, and we do not seek to make Syria into Iran. But this requires Syria to cooperate with the IAEA. We hope that it will not adopt the tactics of hindrance and unhelpfulness that Tehran has so finely honed," he said (Greg Webb, Global Security Newswire, Nov. 21).