A mission to the Syrian desert by UN nuclear sleuths to examine a building flattened by Israeli aircraft could open a new front in the search for rogue states trying to develop atomic arms under the radar of the international community.
It is a low-key endeavor: Only four International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) inspectors will participate in the three-day project starting yesterday, and both Damascus and the UN agency have pulled down the blinds on news media seeking to report on the trip, keeping all details secret.
Yet the stakes are huge for both Damascus, which denies working on a secret nuclear program, and the IAEA — and through it, the US and its other 34 board member countries.
Washington hopes that the UN agency team will come back with persuasive evidence backing US intelligence that the structure hit by Israel in September was a nearly completed plutonium-producing reactor.
If so, the trip could mark the start of massive atomic agency investigation similar to the probe Iran has been subjected to over the past five years. What’s more, the probe could draw in countries like North Korea, which Washington says helped Damascus and Iran, which media reports have also linked to Syria’s nuclear strivings.
Such prospects alarm Syria. It agreed to allow the nuclear inspectors to visit the bombed Al Kibar site early this month only after months of delay. And it has already said that three other locations suspected of possibly harboring other secret nuclear activities are off limits.
Syrian President Bashar Assad re-emphasized that point earlier this month, saying visits to sites other than Al Kibar were “not within the purview of the agreement” with the IAEA.
Such comments reflect the team’s dilemma: The agency has little formal inspection rights in Syria, which has only a rudimentary declared nuclear program revolving around research and the production of isotopes for medical and agricultural uses, using a small, 27-kilowatt reactor.
Before the trip, IAEA chief Mohamed elBaradei urged Syria to show “transparency,” a call echoed by the US.
“Syria was caught withholding information from the IAEA,” said Gregory Schulte, the chief US delegate to the IAEA. “Now Syria must disclose the truth about Al Kibar and allow IAEA’s inspectors to verify that there are no other undisclosed activities.”
Such calls may fall on deaf ears, however — with the absence of binding agreements with Syria giving the agency broad authority to follow up on nuclear suspicions, the inspectors will have access only to information that the Syrians agree to.
While Damascus has agreed to let the inspectors visit the Al Kibar site, it is unclear what they will be able to do once they get there.
Diplomats accredited to the IAEA said that up to a few days ahead of the trip it was still not clear whether the team would be able to bring ground-penetrating radar needed to probe below the concrete fundament of the new building the Syrians erected on the site of the bombed facility.
How much freedom of movement they would be granted once at the site also was unclear, said the diplomats who were briefed ahead of the mission.
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