Syria allows IAEA to investigate reported secret nuclear site
2/6/08
A United Nations nuclear watchdog team will visit Syria from June 22-24 in order to pursue an investigation into U.S. intelligence alleging that Damascus secretly built an atomic reactor, the agency’s chief said on Monday. The reported reactor site was destroyed in an Israeli air raid last September and Washington handed over intelligence to the International Atomic Energy Agency in April for verification purposes. Syria has denied any covert nuclear arms project. “It has now been agreed that an agency team will visit Syria during the period 22-24 of June. I look forward to Syria’s full cooperation in this matter,” IAEA Director General Mohamed ElBaradei told a meeting of the agency’s 35-nation Board of Governors. He did not say whether Syria, which had not responded for months to IAEA requests for access, would allow U.N. investigators to examine the al-Kibar site in the country’s remote northeast desert.