The UN blamed an interpreter's error for an erroneous report that Syria had claimed an Israeli airstrike hit a Syrian nuclear facility, a mistake that made headlines in the Middle East and heightened concerns over Damascus' nuclear ambitions.
Syria denied on Wednesday that one of its representatives told the UN General Assembly's committee that deals with disarmament on Tuesday that Israel had attacked a Syrian nuclear facility, adding that "such facilities do not exist in Syria.''
Quoting an unnamed Foreign Ministry source, the state-run Syrian Arab News Agency said its representative was misquoted -- and after more than seven hours of investigation the UN said that was indeed the case.
"There was an interpretation error made yesterday when the First Committee was in session," UN associate spokesman Farhan Haq said. "There was no use of the word nuclear."
"Although in English the interpreter had suggested that the Syrian delegate had referred to an attack on a nuclear facility, what he said was `like what happened on the 6th of September against my country,'" Haq said.
The incident started on Tuesday night with a UN press summary of the First Committee that paraphrased an unnamed Syrian representative as saying that "Israel was the fourth-largest exporter of weapons of mass destruction and a violator of other nations' airspace and it had taken action against nuclear facilities, including the 6 July attack in Syria."
Israeli warplanes carried out an airstrike in northeastern Syria near the border with Turkey on Sept. 6, not July 6.
After several hours, Haq said the exact words of the English interpreter were: "An entity that is the fourth-largest exporter of weapons of mass destruction in the world, an entity that violates other countries' airspace and that takes action against nuclear facilities, including the attack on 6 July this year on a nuclear facility in my country -- that entity has no right to lie, which it has done consistently."
It took until late afternoon for the UN to issue the correct translation from the original Arabic words spoken by the Syrian representative.
"The [entity] that is ranking number four among the exporters of lethal weapons in the world ... which violates the airspace of sovereign states and carries out military aggression against them, like what happened on Sept. 6 against my country, such entity with all those characteristics and even more, has no right for its representative to go on lying without shame," the corrected text said.
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