International Christian Embassy Jerusalem, 24 Jun 2008

UN nuclear inspectors examined an alleged nuclear site in Syria on Monday that the US said was the location of a secret reactor that was nearly completed when it was bombed by Israel nine months ago.

Neither Syria nor the International Atomic Energy Agency have released any further details about the visit, which Damascus finally consented to on June 5.

Syria denies that it has a secret nuclear program and claims that Israel fired at an ordinary military structure in al-Kibar. Syria has been on the IAEA proliferation watch list since April, after the UN watchdog agency received photographs from the United States that reportedly showed a North Korean-designed reactor that could have yielded plutonium. In 2006 Pyongyang evaded IAEA checks and tested a nuclear device produced from a similarly designed reactor.

Meanwhile, Syria continues to resist IAEA requests to inspect three other sites for facilities that would have been necessary for the alleged reactor to function, claiming that they are conventional military bases. IAEA chief Mohamed ElBaradei condemned the Israeli raid and criticized the US for not having shared its intelligence material on Syria with the UN agency sooner.

In regards to yesterday's inspection, ElBaradei said, "It is doubtful that we will find anything there now, assuming there was anything there in the first place." Last week the IAEA chief said that there was no evidence Syria had the skills or fuel needed to run a nuclear complex, an assertion questioned by Washington, reports Reuters.

Copyright © 2007 International Christian Embassy Jerusalem