The UN nuclear watchdog chief urged Syria on Friday to show “transparency” and cooperate with inspectors from the world agency due to visit the middle eastern country this weekend.
The visit will be the start of an international fact check of US and Israeli assertions that Damascus had tried to build a plutonium-producing facility under the radar of the international community.
Mohamed ElBaradei, who heads the Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), told the pan-Arab television station al-Arabiya that he hoped Syria will let IAEA inspectors visit “all locations” they are interested in.
Syria said earlier this month it wouldn’t allow the IAEA to probe beyond a site bombed by Israel last September, despite IAEA’s expressed eagerness to visit three other suspect locations.
“We will go to Syria with open eyes and we will observe the facts ... all I ask of Syria is to show absolute transparency and help” ElBaradei said in the interview, aired late on Friday.
“I hope that Syria will take us to all the locations,” where allegedly there could be other reactors, he said.
His remarks reflected IAEA hopes that Syria could still warm to giving IAEA access to the three other sites. The main focus on the agency’s visit between today and Tuesday is the facility at al Kibar — a building in the country’s remote eastern desert that was destroyed in September by Israeli jets.
Syria agreed early this month to an IAEA demand to check US assertions that the target was a plutonium-producing reactor, nearly complete and thus at the stage where it could generate the fissile material for nuclear arms.
Neither the US nor Israel told the IAEA about the bombing until late April, about a year after they obtained what they considered decisive intelligence: dozens of photographs from a handheld camera of the inside and outside of the compound.
The satellite photos appeared to show construction crews using the interval to erect another structure over the site — a move that heightened suspicions of a possible cover-up.
ElBaradei again rebuked Israel for the bombing, condemning its “use of solo military force” and for not sharing its information with the IAEA.
“Before Israel’s hitting Syria ... we could have had the time to go to Syria to investigate and learn of any covert Syrian reactor,” ElBaradei said.
ElBaradei said that he had told the Syrians that, “if they, as they claim, don’t have any covert nuclear program, they have to practice absolute transparency.”
But he also cautioned that the probe of the bombed site would be “very difficult because the body of evidence is gone, that reactor has been destroyed.”
In the interview, part of which was aired earlier this week, ElBaradei also said that his agency didn’t have evidence Syria possesses the fuel or technical know-how for a large-scale nuclear plant.
“We have no evidence that Syria has the human resources that enable it to initiate a large-scale nuclear program,” he said.
Archeologists in Peru on Thursday said they found the 5,000-year-old remains of a noblewoman at the sacred city of Caral, revealing the important role played by women in the oldest center of civilization in the Americas. “What has been discovered corresponds to a woman who apparently had elevated status, an elite woman,” archeologist David Palomino said. The mummy was found in Aspero, a sacred site within the city of Caral that was a garbage dump for more than 30 years until becoming an archeological site in the 1990s. Palomino said the carefully preserved remains, dating to 3,000BC, contained skin, part of the
‘WATER WARFARE’: A Pakistani official called India’s suspension of a 65-year-old treaty on the sharing of waters from the Indus River ‘a cowardly, illegal move’ Pakistan yesterday canceled visas for Indian nationals, closed its airspace for all Indian-owned or operated airlines, and suspended all trade with India, including to and from any third country. The retaliatory measures follow India’s decision to suspend visas for Pakistani nationals in the aftermath of a deadly attack by shooters in Kashmir that killed 26 people, mostly tourists. The rare attack on civilians shocked and outraged India and prompted calls for action against their country’s archenemy, Pakistan. New Delhi did not publicly produce evidence connecting the attack to its neighbor, but said it had “cross-border” links to Pakistan. Pakistan denied any connection to
TRUMP EFFECT: The win capped one of the most dramatic turnarounds in Canadian political history after the Conservatives had led the Liberals by more than 20 points Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney yesterday pledged to win US President Donald Trump’s trade war after winning Canada’s election and leading his Liberal Party to another term in power. Following a campaign dominated by Trump’s tariffs and annexation threats, Carney promised to chart “a new path forward” in a world “fundamentally changed” by a US that is newly hostile to free trade. “We are over the shock of the American betrayal, but we should never forget the lessons,” said Carney, who led the central banks of Canada and the UK before entering politics earlier this year. “We will win this trade war and
Armed with 4,000 eggs and a truckload of sugar and cream, French pastry chefs on Wednesday completed a 121.8m-long strawberry cake that they have claimed is the world’s longest ever made. Youssef El Gatou brought together 20 chefs to make the 1.2 tonne masterpiece that took a week to complete and was set out on tables in an ice rink in the Paris suburb town of Argenteuil for residents to inspect. The effort overtook a 100.48m-long strawberry cake made in the Italian town of San Mauro Torinese in 2019. El Gatou’s cake also used 350kg of strawberries, 150kg of sugar and 415kg of
RSS