Diplomats Say Uranium Traces Found at Bombed Syrian Site.
Samples taken from a Syrian site bombed by Israel last year contained traces of uranium combined with other elements that merit further investigation, diplomats said Monday. (AP/MSNBC)

See also Formal Report Drafted on Syria Atom Probe – Mark Heinrich
The UN nuclear watchdog is drafting an investigative report on Syria for the first time, suggesting to Western diplomats the agency has found some sign of undeclared activity at a site bombed by Israel last year.

Moreover, Syria has been made an official agenda item at the year-end November 27-28 meeting of the International Atomic Energy Agency’s board of governors, unlike previously when IAEA officials said initial inquiries were inconclusive. (Reuters)

—————-

AP – updated 6:46 p.m. CT, Mon., Nov. 10, 2008

VIENNA, Austria – Samples taken from a Syrian site bombed by Israel on suspicion it was a covert nuclear reactor contained traces of uranium combined with other elements that merit further investigation, diplomats said Monday.

The diplomats — who demanded anonymity because their information was confidential — said the uranium was processed and not in raw form, suggesting some kind of nuclear link.

But one of the diplomats said the uranium finding itself was significant only in the context of other traces found in the oil or air samples taken by International Atomic Energy Agency experts during their visit to the site in June.

Syria has a rudimentary declared nuclear program revolving around research and the production of isotopes for medical and agricultural uses, using a small, 27-kilowatt reactor, and the uranium traces might have originated from there and inadvertently been carried to the bombed site. But taken together, the uranium and the other components found on the environmental swipes “tell a story” worth investigating, said the diplomat.

The second diplomat said the findings would figure in a report on Syria that will be presented to the IAEA’s 35-nation board next week ahead of a scheduled two-day board meeting starting Nov. 24.

The findings are important after months of uncertainty about the status of the investigation by the International Atomic Energy Agency.

Preliminary results of the environmental samples collected from the site by an IAEA team were inconclusive, adding weight to Syrian assertions that no trips beyond the initial IAEA visit in June were necessary.

The U.S. says the facility hit by Israeli warplanes more than a year ago was a nearly completed reactor that — when on line — could produce plutonium, a pathway to nuclear arms.

***

Covert program denied: But Damascus denies running a covert program.

Ibrahim Othman, Syria’s nuclear chief, has said his country would wait for final environmental results before deciding how to respond to repeated IAEA requests for follow-up visits to the one in June, when the samples were collected.

But a diplomat attending a closed IAEA meeting in September told the AP that Syrian Ambassador Mohammed Badi Khattab suggested his country would not allow further visits under any circumstances because it was still technically at war with Israel and was concerned any additional IAEA probe would expose some of its non-nuclear military secrets.

Beyond wanting to revisit the site bombed by Israel, IAEA experts also want to follow up on U.S. Israeli and other intelligence that North Korea was involved in building the alleged Syrian program.

Also, IAEA officials have been seeking permission to visit three other sites purportedly linked to the alleged reactor destroyed by the Israelis — although Syria already has said that those locations are off limits because they are in restricted military areas.

***

Images raise suspicions of Syria facility.

Syria fears the IAEA probe could lead to a massive investigation similar to the probe Iran has been subjected to for more than five years — and to related fallout. Iran is under U.N. sanctions because of its refusal to heed Security Council demands to curb its nuclear activities.

IAEA experts came back June 25 from a four-day visit carrying air and soil samples from the Al Kibar site hit by Israel. But intelligence suggests that radioactive material had not yet been introduced into the alleged reactor before it was destroyed.

That left the inspectors looking for other components, including minute quantities of graphite, a cooling element in the type of North Korean prototype that allegedly was being built with help from Pyongyang. Such a reactor contains hundreds of tons of graphite, and any major explosion would have sent dust over the immediate area.

***

Mark Heinrich – Formal report drafted on Syria atom probe.
Mon 10 Nov 2008, 15:31 GMT

VIENNA (Reuters) – The U.N. nuclear watchdog is drafting an investigative report on Syria for the first time, suggesting to Western diplomats the agency has found some sign of undeclared activity at a site bombed by Israel last year.

Moreover, Syria has been made an official agenda item at the year-end November 27-28 meeting of the International Atomic Energy Agency’s board of governors, unlike previously when IAEA officials said initial inquiries were inconclusive.

The IAEA has been probing Syria since May over U.S. intelligence allegations that it was close to completing a plutonium-producing nuclear reactor with North Korean help before Israel flattened the site in an air strike.

Syria denies pursuing nuclear energy for atomic bomb purposes in violation of the Non-Proliferation Treaty. It says the unverified U.S. intelligence was fabricated.

A restricted copy of the 35-nation meeting’s agenda said Syria was added to address a pending report by IAEA Director Mohamed ElBaradei, similar in format to those issued quarterly on an agency probe into Iran’s secretive nuclear programme.

“The agency clearly thinks it has something significant enough to report to put Syria on the (nuclear safeguards) agenda right after North Korea and Iran,” said a senior diplomat with ties to the Vienna-based U.N. watchdog.

“We do not have firm word on what the inspectors found (at the site), only that the findings suggest there are more questions to pursue,” said another senior diplomat accredited to the agency.

The diplomats asked for anonymity in exchange for discussing politically sensitive and confidential information.

Syria — an ally of Iran, which is subject of a much longer-running, and now stalled, IAEA investigation — has one declared nuclear site — an old research reactor.

ElBaradei told an IAEA board meeting in September that preliminary findings from test samples taken by inspectors granted a visit in June to the desert location hit by Israel bore no traces of atomic activity.

Diplomats said the IAEA apparently had now evaluated all the environmental swipe samples but exactly what the sleuths found remained unclear and would be laid out in the report.

Syria says all that was there was a disused military building, not a clandestine nuclear complex of North Korean design that could have yielded plutonium for atomic bomb fuel as Washington has maintained.

It told the IAEA in September it was cooperating fully with the IAEA inquiry but would not go as far as opening up military sites because this would undermine its security.

ElBaradei said then that Syrian cooperation had been “good” but Damascus needed to show “maximum cooperation” for the agency to draw conclusions.

Diplomats close to the IAEA say Syria has ignored agency requests to check three military installations that may have harboured materials connected to the alleged reactor site.