Syrian site yields uranium, envoys say

Atomic agency to issue report on bombed plant

VIENNA - UN investigators have found traces of uranium at a Syrian site that Washington says was a secret, partially built nuclear reactor before Israel bombed the target last year, diplomats said yesterday.

They said the uranium particles turned up in some environmental swipe samples inspectors took at the site in June. They said the finding was not enough to draw conclusions but raised concerns requiring clarification.

The International Atomic Energy Agency and Syria had no immediate comment. However, word of the finding leaked hours after IAEA officials confirmed director Mohamed ElBaradei was preparing a formal written report on Syria for the first time.

Moreover, the topic of Syria has been placed on the agenda at the year-end Nov. 27-28 meeting of the UN watchdog's 35-nation board of governors. Previously, IAEA officials had said initial inquiries were inconclusive.

Syria denies US intelligence alleging it was building a reactor with North Korean expertise meant to make plutonium, the main atomic bomb ingredient reprocessed from spent uranium fuel. If proven, this would violate the Non-Proliferation Treaty.

Damascus says the unverified intelligence was fabricated and Washington has no credibility in the field after asserting Iraq was developing weapons of mass destruction and using that assertion to justify the 2003 invasion that ousted Saddam Hussein and devastated the country.

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

Diplomats accredited to the Vienna-based nuclear watchdog said a wider range of samples had been analyzed and some showed contamination with minute amounts of a uranium compound.

"It isn't enough to conclude or prove what the Syrians were doing, but the IAEA has concluded this requires further investigation," said one diplomat accredited to the IAEA.

"It was a man-made component, not natural [ore]. There is no sign there was already nuclear fuel or [production] activity there," another diplomat said.

This diplomat noted that such traces could have been carried to the site inadvertently on the clothes of workers or on equipment.

Diplomats close to the IAEA have said Syria has ignored agency requests to check three military sites for equipment or other evidence possibly linked to the bombed site.

"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 agency.

"It's been made clear to us that the samples raise further questions," said a fourth diplomat, who like others asked for anonymity in exchange for discussing confidential information.

Syria's only declared nuclear site is a research reactor. It is an ally of Iran, whose secretive uranium enrichment program is subject of a long-running investigation now stalled over IAEA demands for wider access. Iran says it is refining uranium only for electricity, not nuclear weapons as Western leaders suspect.

ElBaradei's Syria report, as well as his latest one on Iran, are expected to be issued next week.