US says Syria copying Iran’s tactics of impeding IAEA
Published: Friday, November 28, 2008
16:30GMT—11:30AM/EST
SYRIA – IAEA – NUCLEAR – SCHULTE
Washington, 28 November (IranVNC)—The United States’ envoy to the International Atomic Energy Agency [IAEA], Gregory Schulte, today accused Syria of using tactics adopted by Iran to impede the agency’s investigation into alleged illicit nuclear work.
“So far Syria seems to be testing the tactics of hindrance and unhelpfulness that Iran has so finely honed,” Reuters quoted Schulte as telling the IAEA’s 35-nation board of governors.
The IAEA said in a report on 19 November that a suspected site in the Syrian desert, that was reportedly destroyed by Israeli warplanes in September 2007, had markings resembling a nuclear reactor. Traces of uranium were also discovered by IAEA inspectors during their only visit to the site last June.
Following the IAEA’s two-day Board of Governors meeting, the majority of member-states urged Syria to cooperate fully with the nuclear watchdog.
“Given the gravity of the situation, we join other board members in strongly supporting the IAEA’s continued investigation and encouraging Syria’s authorities to grant all access requested to facilities, individuals and information,” Schulte said, reports AFP.
France’s envoy to the IAEA, Francois-Xavier Deniaud, speaking for the European Union, also urged Damascus to cooperate with the agency “without reservations”, Reuters reports.
Deniaud further called on Damascus to ratify the IAEA’s Additional Protocol, which would permit snap inspections by IAEA inspectors beyond declared nuclear sites.
Syria has said that the desert site, called Al-Kibar, was a military installation, and has ruled out more visits to the site on national security grounds. In addition, Damascus has rejected IAEA requests to inspect three other sites.
“The IAEA needs to understand what Syria was building in secret and then buried under meters of earth and a new building, and to demonstrate that illicit nuclear activities, whether in Syria or elsewhere, will be caught and investigated,” Schulte was quoted by Reuters as saying today.
Diplomats who attended the closed-door session told AFP that Iran, Venezuela and non-aligned countries expressed support for Syria.
Iran is under a long-running IAEA investigation into its controversial nuclear program, which Western powers suspect has a military aim. Tehran insists that its nuclear program has peaceful aims, such as the generation of electricity.
The Board of Governors debated Iran’s nuclear program on Thursday, during which Western states expressed “profound concern” at the lack of progress of an IAEA probe into Western intelligence allegations that Tehran had studied how to design nuclear bombs.
Iran, which has called that intelligence “baseless” and “unfounded”, said yesterday that it would continue with its nuclear program, despite three rounds of United Nations Security Council sanctions.
“Iran will never surrender from its indisputable right to the peaceful use of nuclear energy,” Iran’s IAEA envoy, Ali Asghar Soltanieh, was quoted by the conservative Fars News Agency as saying yesterday.
Sources: Reuters, Agence France-Presse, Fars News Agency
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