Syria has revealed some details of past nuclear experiments to UN inspectors but is still blocking access to a desert site where secret atomic activity may have taken place, a confidential report said on Monday.
The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) report said Syria was not allowing follow-up access to a bombed desert site, which US intelligence reports said had been a North Korean-designed nuclear reactor under construction, geared for atomic bomb fuel.
Israel bombed the site to rubble in 2007. Syria allowed the IAEA to inspect the site in June 2008, but has not allowed the agency to revisit it since then.
The agency says it needs to take more samples at the site to remove any doubts about Syria’s past atomic activities. It also repeated a call for access to three military sites, whose appearance was altered by landscaping after the IAEA first asked to check them.
“Such access is essential to enable the agency to establish the facts and make progress in its verification, while protecting military and other information which Syria considers to be sensitive,” IAEA Director-General Yukiya Amano wrote.
Syria, an ally of Iran that is under IAEA investigation over nuclear proliferation suspicions, has denied ever having an atom bomb program and says the intelligence suggesting it had is fabricated.
Syria has allowed inspectors to visit a research reactor in Damascus, where they have been checking whether there is a link with the bombed Dair Alzour desert site after discovering unexplained particles of processed uranium at both.
Some analysts say the uranium traces raise the question of whether it used some natural uranium intended for the alleged reactor at Dair Alzour in tests applicable to learning how to separate out bomb-grade plutonium from spent nuclear fuel.
On a recent visit to the Damascus reactor, Syria belatedly revealed that it had conducted experiments to irradiate and convert uranium-derived material during 2004, the report said. It also provided the IAEA with information about amounts of previously undisclosed nuclear material.
“These were [experiments] with small quantities in order to learn the processes,” a senior official familiar with the IAEA probe said. “They should have been reported to the IAEA under the safeguards agreement.”
The official said it was not clear if the past work was just experimental, as Syria claimed, or if it could have had other uses. The report said the IAEA was examining further samples.
It urged Syria to cooperate with the agency’s open questions about the work as soon as possible and said it should adopt the IAEA’s Additional Protocol, which permits unfettered inspections beyond declared nuclear sites to hunt out any covert atomic activity.
Police in China detained dozens of pastors of one of its largest underground churches over the weekend, a church spokesperson and relatives said, in the biggest crackdown on Christians since 2018. The detentions, which come amid renewed China-US tensions after Beijing dramatically expanded rare earth export controls last week, drew condemnation from US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who on Sunday called for the immediate release of the pastors. Pastor Jin Mingri (金明日), founder of Zion Church, an unofficial “house church” not sanctioned by the Chinese government, was detained at his home in the southern city of Beihai on Friday evening, said
Floods on Sunday trapped people in vehicles and homes in Spain as torrential rain drenched the northeastern Catalonia region, a day after downpours unleashed travel chaos on the Mediterranean island of Ibiza. Local media shared videos of roaring torrents of brown water tearing through streets and submerging vehicles. National weather agency AEMET decreed the highest red alert in the province of Tarragona, warning of 180mm of rain in 12 hours in the Ebro River delta. Catalan fire service spokesman Oriol Corbella told reporters people had been caught by surprise, with people trapped “inside vehicles, in buildings, on ground floors.” Santa Barbara Mayor Josep Lluis
The Venezuelan government on Monday said that it would close its embassies in Norway and Australia, and open new ones in Burkina Faso and Zimbabwe in a restructuring of its foreign service, after weeks of growing tensions with the US. The closures are part of the “strategic reassignation of resources,” Venezueland President Nicolas Maduro’s government said in a statement, adding that consular services to Venezuelans in Norway and Australia would be provided by diplomatic missions, with details to be shared in the coming days. The Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs said that it had received notice of the embassy closure, but no
A missing fingertip offers a clue to Mako Nishimura’s criminal past as one of Japan’s few female yakuza, but after clawing her way out of the underworld, she now spends her days helping other retired gangsters reintegrate into society. The multibillion-dollar yakuza organized crime network has long ruled over Japan’s drug rings, illicit gambling dens and sex trade. In the past few years, the empire has started to crumble as members have dwindled and laws targeting mafia are tightened. An intensifying police crackdown has shrunk yakuza forces nationwide, with their numbers dipping below 20,000 last year for the first time since records
RSS