Syria rejects opening military sites to atom probe

Mark Heinrich
REUTERS
Friday, October 3, 2008

VIENNA (Reuters) – Syria said on Friday it was cooperating fully with a U.N. inquiry into allegations of secret nuclear work in the country but would not go as far as opening up military sites because this would undermine its security.
But, faced with stiff opposition among 145 member states of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Syria dropped a bid for a seat on the IAEA’s governing body, clearing the way for rival Western-backed Afghanistan to get the post, diplomats said.

The Vienna-based U.N. nuclear watchdog has been probing Syria since May over U.S. intelligence allegations that it was close to completing a secret, plutonium-producing reactor before Israel flattened the site in an air strike a year ago.

(ARTICLE CONTINUES BELOW)

Syria — an ally of Iran, which is the subject of a much longer-running, and now stalled, IAEA investigation — has denied having a clandestine nuclear programme. It does have one declared nuclear site — a research reactor.

The IAEA said last week that preliminary findings from test samples taken by inspectors granted a visit to the desert location in June bore no traces of atomic activity. Syria says all that was there was a disused military building.

“We would like to underline that my government is cooperating with the agency in full transparency and will follow suit all along the way,” said Ibrahim Othman, director-general of Syria’s Atomic Energy Commission.

“However, this cooperation will not in any way come at the expense of exposing our military sites or causing a threat to our national security,” he told the annual meeting of the IAEA’s 145-nation General Conference, or assembly, in Vienna.

Diplomats close to the IAEA have said Syria has ignored agency requests to check three military installations believed connected to the alleged reactor site.

SAME ISSUE STALLS IRAN PROBE

An IAEA probe into unverified intelligence about covert atomic bomb research by Iran has hit the same stumbling block — the barring of inspectors from military sites to which the IAEA has no legal right of access without proof of nuclearisation.

Iran has dismissed the intelligence, provided by 10 countries, as fabricated. The IAEA says the allegations are “serious” but Iran has not supplied evidence to refute them.

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6 Responses to “Syria rejects opening military sites to atom probe”

1. mythicshadow Says:
   October 3rd, 2008 at 5:09 pm

   http://ca.youtube.com/watch?v=XbrNSOxwXOM

2. molotovmouse Says:
   October 3rd, 2008 at 10:50 pm

   Why should Syria open its facilities for inspection? The US sure as hell wouldn’t let some foreign power inspect its plants or military sites.

3. Lorenzo Thomas Says:
   October 4th, 2008 at 6:56 am

   “They want a fascist planet with the superwealthy ruling it all
   Since we’re too independent, America must be led to fall
   When our credit’s been exhausted to subdue the Middle East,
   They’ll install our debtor nation in the body of The Beast
   Traitor…Dare call it treason”

   http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uw5dP5gy2Vs

   –CORNBREAD MAFIA

4. kevin coleman Says:
   October 4th, 2008 at 3:03 pm

   the goveners need a summit

   the agenda needs to be forming a new form of government.
   1. i would sugest a much weaker central government.
   2. require public debate congressman meet one day a month in district everything recorded.
   3. ban all taxes, user pay.
   4. limit adding items
   5. keep the fed in a cage!
   6. powers spelled out no fiat laws
   7. the fed should do only, defend borders, courts, settel interstate issues and any function nessary for man to live civily with other men.
   8. nothing more nothing less.
   9. oh yes, everyone expressing personial opinions about god, man satan you have done your job?
   10. if my people will repent and call on me to heal there land i will heal it!
   11. like ww2, god had to send in the hunters to get the jew back into isreal proper.
   12. like the bush adminstration, god is using his evil to knock the sleeping giant up side the head. hello america its 7:00AM get up stand on your feet, feel that thing in your chest its the heart of a man not a beast! god is waiting for america to rise?

   gods not dead he is very much alive, i invite you to prove me wrong?
   regards kevin coleman grove, ok

5. mythicshadow Says:
   October 4th, 2008 at 11:08 pm

   http://ca.youtube.com/watch?v=a5Nl7_NK0jU

6. Libertyguy123 Says:
   October 5th, 2008 at 6:52 am

   The IAEA needs to inspect israel. If it refuses we must attack it just like Iraq! Why does israel have the bomb and the sampson option while we keep quiet about it? We are zionist occupied territory and will always be at war because they want us at war.