Bombed Syrian facility had uranium traces, report says

WASHINGTON - The Syrian facility bombed by Israeli planes last year bore multiple hallmarks of a nuclear reactor, and the ruined site was contaminated with uranium, UN nuclear inspectors confirmed yesterday in a report that largely backed Bush administration accounts of a secret atomic program in Syria.

The report stopped short of declaring the facility to be a nuclear reactor, noting that Damascus had taken extensive steps to sanitize the site before officials of the International Atomic Energy Agency were allowed to visit. But agency officials said Syria did not provide blueprints or other documents to support its assertion that the destroyed building had a non-nuclear purpose.

In a separate report, the agency also heaped new criticism on Iran for failing to cooperate with UN inspectors in clearing up questions about past nuclear research that appears linked to a military weapons program. The report said Iran continues to expand its capacity for making enriched uranium, a key ingredient in both commercial nuclear power and nuclear weapons.

The IAEA has been engaged in a contentious negotiations with both Syria and Iran as it seeks to assess allegations that both countries were secretly planning to make nuclear weapons. Syria has denied having nuclear ambitions, while Iran contends that its nuclear program is exclusively for electricity production.

The Syrian facility, on the banks of the Euphrates River near the village of al Kibar, was obliterated by Israeli bombs on Sept. 6, 2007. While the Bush administration previously released photographs and other evidence suggesting that the building was a partly completed nuclear reactor, the new IAEA report provides independent support for the US claim.

The report said the IAEA's analysis of satellite photos taken before and immediately after the bombing revealed numerous features suggestive of a nuclear reactor, including a containment shield, an extensive power supply and large water pumps for cooling.

But more provocative was the IAEA's discovery, during a visit to the site in May, of traces of uranium in soil recovered from the site.

A senior UN official, describing the finding, said the soil samples contained "significant" amounts of uranium in a form that clearly suggested human manipulation. The uranium was not enriched but had been "chemically processed," the official said.