Syria indicates further IAEA inspections are unlikely (Roundup)

Nov 22, 2008, 7:55 GMT

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.