ElBaradei: Syria evidence insufficient

DUBAI - Uranium traces found at a Syrian site bombed by Israel were not sufficient evidence of undeclared nuclear activity, but Syria must be more open to help clarify the issue, the head of the UN nuclear watchdog said yesterday.

"We won't be able to reach a quick conclusion unless we have credible information," Mohamed ElBaradei, International Atomic Energy Agency director, said at a news conference in Dubai. "There was uranium but it does not mean there was a reactor."

The IAEA inquiry was spurred by US intelligence that the site was a secret nuclear reactor Syria had almost completed when it was destroyed by an Israeli air raid last year.

Syria has said the target was a disused military building.

ElBaradei said the uranium particles were not highly enriched - the type used to fuel atomic bombs.

Syria and Israel should do more to help the investigation, he said.

Diplomats monitoring the IAEA in Vienna said last week that particles of uranium had been retrieved from swipe samples taken by IAEA inspectors from the site in June.

They said the traces appeared to be of a processed form of uranium, possibly at the stage at which it would be loaded into a reactor for enrichment as fuel for civilian energy or for weapons. But the origin of the traces was unclear, they said.

REUTERS