Global General

Syria site 'very likely' an atom reactor: IAEA

(Agencies)
Updated: 2011-05-25 10:00

VIENNA - A Syrian site bombed by Israel in 2007 was "very likely" to have been a nuclear reactor, the UN atomic agency said in a report that could pave the way for Damascus to be referred to the UN Security Council next month.

The confidential report by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) threw independent weight behind US allegations that Syria was secretly building a reactor at the Dair Alzour site in the desert, possibly with military aims.

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It was obtained by Reuters on Tuesday, a day after the European Union imposed sanctions on Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and other senior officials.

Syrian activists say more than 1,000 civilians have been killed in a crackdown on demonstrators opposing Assad's rule.

The West has become increasingly frustrated over what is seen as Syria's stonewalling of an IAEA probe into Dair Alzour, which US intelligence reports said was a nascent Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK)-designed reactor intended to make bomb fuel.

Syria denies harbouring a nuclear weapons programme and says the IAEA should focus on Israel instead because of its undeclared nuclear arsenal.

" ... the agency assesses that it was very likely that the building destroyed at Dair Alzour site was a nuclear reactor which should have been declared to the agency," the IAEA said.

The report suggested it may have been a gas-cooled graphite moderated reactor -- a model found also in North Korea, whose nuclear weapons ambitions have drawn punitive UN measures.

The Vienna-based UN body had previously said there were indications nuclear activity may have taken place at the site.

The United States and its European allies are expected to seize on the report's finding to push for a decision by the IAEA's 35-nation board, meeting on June 6-10, to report the Syrian nuclear issue to the UN Security Council.