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.
The Philippines yesterday said its coast guard would acquire 40 fast patrol craft from France, with plans to deploy some of them in disputed areas of the South China Sea. The deal is the “largest so far single purchase” in Manila’s ongoing effort to modernize its coast guard, with deliveries set to start in four years, Philippine Coast Guard Commandant Admiral Ronnie Gil Gavan told a news conference. He declined to provide specifications for the vessels, which Manila said would cost 25.8 billion pesos (US$440 million), to be funded by development aid from the French government. He said some of the vessels would
CARGO PLANE VECTOR: Officials said they believe that attacks involving incendiary devices on planes was the work of Russia’s military intelligence agency the GRU Western security officials suspect Russian intelligence was behind a plot to put incendiary devices in packages on cargo planes headed to North America, including one that caught fire at a courier hub in Germany and another that ignited in a warehouse in England. Poland last month said that it had arrested four people suspected to be linked to a foreign intelligence operation that carried out sabotage and was searching for two others. Lithuania’s prosecutor general Nida Grunskiene on Tuesday said that there were an unspecified number of people detained in several countries, offering no elaboration. The events come as Western officials say
A plane bringing Israeli soccer supporters home from Amsterdam landed at Israel’s Ben Gurion airport on Friday after a night of violence that Israeli and Dutch officials condemned as “anti-Semitic.” Dutch police said 62 arrests were made in connection with the violence, which erupted after a UEFA Europa League soccer tie between Amsterdam club Ajax and Maccabi Tel Aviv. Israeli flag carrier El Al said it was sending six planes to the Netherlands to bring the fans home, after the first flight carrying evacuees landed on Friday afternoon, the Israeli Airports Authority said. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu also ordered
Former US House of Representatives speaker Nancy Pelosi said if US President Joe Biden had ended his re-election bid sooner, the Democratic Party could have held a competitive nominating process to choose his replacement. “Had the president gotten out sooner, there may have been other candidates in the race,” Pelosi said in an interview on Thursday published by the New York Times the next day. “The anticipation was that, if the president were to step aside, that there would be an open primary,” she said. Pelosi said she thought the Democratic candidate, US Vice President Kamala Harris, “would have done
RSS