Syria: inspector calls

Officials from UN nuclear watchdog the IAEA will visit Syria on Sunday to examine allegations that it was engaged in building a secret nuclear reactor with North Korean help.  Damascus, a US adversary and ally of Iran whose secretive uranium enrichment programme has been under IAEA investigation since 2003, has told governors to cooperate with the inquiry.

In April, Washington turned over evidence to the agency suggesting that the al-Kabir site bombed by Israel last September was a putative nuclear reactor, a claim denied by Damascus, which says it was a disused military building with no nuclear connections. According to US intelligence officials, the site was nearly operational before the bombing; the White House maintained that it was not intended for peaceful purposes.

However, the US intelligence community has 'low confidence' that the facility was the centre of a potential Syrian nuclear weapons programme, similar to Pyongyang's plutonium-based scheme, because it lacked a reprocessing facility. If Pyongyang has helped Damascus create a crude nuclear programme, this is not a surprise, given North Korea's long history of involvement in nuclear proliferation -- although Syria was probably years from producing a weapon. Officials will inspect the remote desert site and has interest in three other locations, though movements may be restricted by Damascus, which claims the other sites are military installations off-limits to IAEA inspectors because they have no nuclear connection.

IAEA Director-General Mohamed El Baradei has criticised Washington for withholding evidence, and Israel for its unilateral military action. If Damascus did start building a reactor without telling the IAEA, this would violate the Non-Proliferation Treaty, but is unlikely to lead to any serious consequences for the regime.