Little progress in Syrian nuclear probe: UN official

August 28, 2009
AFP
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VIENNA, Austria — The UN atomic watchdog has been unable to make much progress in its investigation into alleged illicit nuclear activities in Syria, a senior UN official said Friday.
There's not much progress, if anything, the official said in response to a new report by the International Atomic Energy Agency on its probe into allegations that Damascus had been building a covert nuclear reactor at a remote desert site until it was bombed by Israeli planes in September 2007.
The IAEA has been investigating the allegations since last year and it has already said that the building bore some of the characteristics of a nuclear facility.
UN inspectors also detected significant traces of man-made uranium at that site, too, as yet unexplained by Damascus.
In its latest restricted report, a copy of which was obtained by AFP, the UN watchdog complained that Syria has not yet provided the necessary cooperation to allow it to determine the origin of the anthropogenic natural uranium particles found at the Dair Alzour site.
Neither had Damascus provided any evidence to back up its assertion that the building was not nuclear related or clarify the functional relationship between Dair Alzour site and three other suspect locations, the report stated.
Syria argues that it is under no obligation to provide further information about Dair Alzour or the other locations because of their military nature.
But the IAEA dismissed such arguments.
The fact that the agency has found particles of nuclear material of a type which is not in the declared inventory of Syria underscores the need to pursue this matter, the report said.
Recognising Syria's concerns about the sensitivity of certain information and locations, (IAEA chief Mohamed ElBaradei) urges Syria to engage with the agency to establish the necessary modalities for managed access to such information and locations to enable the agency to establish the facts, it added.
In its June report, the IAEA said its inspectors had also found uranium particles at a research reactor near Damascus that would not normally be expected there.
In the new report, the IAEA said that Syria had cooperated in clarifying how the uranium got there.
In relation to the presence of anthropogenic natural uranium particles at the Miniature Neutron Source Reactor (MNSR) in Damascus, Syria provided additional explanations about the possible origin of the particles, it said.
Syria suggested the natural uranium particles had resulted from the accumulation of sample and reference materials used in neutron activation analysis and provided documentation to back up its argument, the report said.
On July 8, the IAEA performed a physical inventory verification (PIV) at the MNSR during which environmental samples were taken, as well as samples from the materials which Syria stated were the source of the anthropogenic natural uranium particles, the IAEA said.
The agency is awaiting the results of the analyses of the samples, it concluded.