Nuclear inspectors in Syria to investigate bombed site

SYRIA:INSPECTORS FROM the International Atomic Agency (IAEA) arrived in Damascus yesterday to probe accusations that Syria has violated its commitments under the Non-Proliferation Treaty by constructing a clandestine nuclear reactor.

Damascus denies it has a covert programme and says a building bombed by Israel last September was not, as Israel and the US al- lege, a nearly completed plutonium reactor capable of producing nuclear warheads and bombs.

It has also been claimed that North Korea was involved in constructing the facility and may have been trying to hide equipment or material in Syria at a time when Pyongyang is meant to be dismantling its nuclear weapons programme.

Last October, Syrian president Bashar al-Assad revealed the target of the Israeli raid was a disused military installation. In June, he asked the IAEA to send a mission to inspect the site and pledged to co-operate with it. He charged that photographic and other evidence submitted by the US was "fabricated 100 per cent".

The head of the three-man team, Olli Heinonen, IAEA deputy director, said the mission would begin its work in Damascus by meeting Syrian counterparts. The IAEA experts have been given permission to inspect the site of the bombing at al-Kibar in the eastern desert, near the Iraqi border.

While the rubble was bulldozed and removed and a new building was constructed on the site, forensic evidence could show whether there had been a reactor on that spot.

Three other sites which the IAEA reportedly seeks to visit have been put out of bounds. These are an alleged pumping station on the Euphrates River which would provide water for cooling a reactor, a site where debris from the bombed building was dumped, and a site where the Syrians carried out a controlled explosion.

The visit could launch a probe similar to the intrusive investiga- tions carried out by the agency in Iran, also accused by Washington of planning to manufacture nuclear weapons. An intensive probe would transform the IAEA's tenuous relationship with Syria into a long-term connection. Until now the agency has been conducting routine inspections of facilities for basic nuclear research and production of radioactive isotopes for medical and agricultural use.