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.
CRACKED SCREEN: The problem is an embarrassing setback for Apple, which spent more than a decade developing the device and touted its durability The iPhone Duo, one of Apple’s biggest new products in years, is drawing a growing number of complaints from customers who say the foldable display cracked after just hours or days of use. In these cases, customers reported hearing a crunching sound when unfolding the phone, followed by a large crack forming along the center crease. Some users also experienced a white patch or other display malfunction on the right side of the screen. Reports of the problem first surfaced on Reddit and other social media platforms. Bloomberg News has since independently verified the issue with more than half a
Long dubbed an “air-conditioned nation,” Singapore is experimenting with cooling alternatives from chilled beams to “passive displacement” to curb its thirst for energy-guzzling air-conditioning. The city-state has the highest per-capita air-conditioner ownership rate in Southeast Asia, with about 99 percent of private residences equipped with cooling units. Singapore’s local building sector accounts for one-fifth of its emissions, while cooling itself accounts for 40 to 60 percent of a building’s energy consumption, according to studies. A stroll down Orchard Road highlights that dependence. Shoppers are greeted by blasts of cool air that waft into the street as doors swing open — a major draw
Ethiopian online influencers are pushing for their government to invade neighboring Eritrea and seize access to the sea, following its success against rebel and Eritrean forces in the past few weeks. The Ethiopian army has advanced right up to the border after repelling an offensive by rebels in the northern Tigray State who were supported by Eritrean troops. Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed has repeatedly said that securing a base on the Red Sea is a vital national objective for Ethiopia, which lost its coastline when Eritrea gained independence in 1993. Some online influencers say that the opportunity to invade has arrived. “The time
Beijing yesterday dismissed as “groundless speculation” a report that said Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) was the target of a Chinese spy plot. The article by the New York Times, published on Thursday, said that US intelligence officials concluded that a Chinese executive linked to a Singapore-based data center company had been funneling information to Beijing. “The report in question is based on groundless speculation and is nothing more than an attempt to smear China,” Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesman Guo Jiakun (郭嘉昆) told a regular briefing. China is in a race for tech dominance with the US, which restricts the export
RSS