Vienna - A senior Syrian official indicated Friday in Vienna
that his country was unlikely to allow further inspections by the
International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) of alleged secret nuclear
sites, as they were military installations.
On Wednesday, IAEA Director General Mohamed ElBaradei issued his
first report after his organization's inspectors visited the al-Kibar
site in Syria in June, where the US alleges Syria was constructing a
nuclear reactor. The Israeli air force bombed the installation in
September 2007.
'It think to follow up, there should be a good reason to say that
there is something there, and in our opinion, this file should be
closed,' said Ibrahim Othman, the director general of the Atomic
Energy Commission of Syria.
Gregory Schulte, the US ambassador to the IAEA, said Friday that
the report 'reinforces the assessment of my government that Syria was
secretly building a nuclear reactor in its eastern desert and thereby
violating its IAEA safeguards obligations.'
Although the IAEA report did not draw any conclusions, it said
images taken before and after the bombing 'are similar to what may be
found in connection with a reactor site.'
When asked to comment, Othman said that 'if every square building
were a reactor ... there would be a lot of reactors in the world.'
Syria's top nuclear officials talked to reporters after a briefing
on the report by the IAEA secretariat for member states.
The official said his country had agreed with the IAEA to allow
only one visit to al-Kibar. In his report, ElBaradei said Syria had
not allowed inspections of three other sites that are possibly
related to al-Kibar.
Although Othman did not rule out the possibility that his
government would change its mind and grant the request, he said that
the places the international inspectors wanted to see were military
installations and therefore off-limits.
IAEA inspectors would however continue their routine inspections
of Syria's declared small nuclear research programme, Othman
stressed.
Syrian officials have told IAEA inspectors that the uranium
particles that were discovered at al-Kibar must have originated from
Israeli munitions, but a senior official close to the IAEA has said
that the uranium was not of the type normally used in missiles.
While Othman told reporters that only three uranium particles were
found in the desert at al-Kibar, ElBaradei's report stated that the
amount was 'significant.'
US ambassador Schulte called on Syria not to follow Iran's path,
which has been reluctant in answering the IAEA's questions about
whether it had conducted nuclear weapons research in the past.
'Syria is not Iran, and we do not seek to make Syria into Iran,'
Gregory Schulte, the US ambassador to the IAEA in Vienna, said in a
statement. 'But this requires Syria to cooperate with the IAEA,' he
said.
Schulte also slammed the Iranian leadership for defying the
demands of the United Nations Security Council by continuing to
enrich uranium and by not answering the IAEA's outstanding questions
about past activities.
The nuclear agency has been probing Iran's nuclear activities
since 2003.
The IAEA's governing board is set to take up the issues of Syria
and Iran in its upcoming regular meeting from November 27.
USA
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