The head of the UN atomic watchdog, Yukiya Amano, on Thursday said for the first time that Syria tried in the past to secretly build a nuclear reactor, which was destroyed by Israeli warplanes five years ago, The Associated Press reported.
Syria denies that the building which was bombed actually contained any nuclear facilities.
RELATED:UN nuclear agency inspects Syria's Homs siteWikiLeaks: Israel bombed Syrian nuclear facilityPossible Syrian nuke facility identified by satelliteFor over two years, Syria has refused IAEA follow-up access to the remains of a complex that was being built at Dair Alzour in the Syrian desert when Israel bombed it to rubble in 2007.
The IAEA carried out an agreed inspection of another Syrian plant earlier in April as part of a long-stalled probe into suspected covert nuclear activity.
"The inspection is being conducted as planned," an official of the
Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said, giving no
further detail.
The visit to the Homs facility in western Syria
was part of a wider IAEA inquiry into US intelligence suggesting Syria
at another location tried to build a nuclear reactor suited to producing
plutonium for atomic bombs.
Syria, which denies any nuclear
weapons ambitions, agreed with the IAEA early last month that its
inspectors could travel to the Homs acid purification plant, where
uranium concentrates, or yellowcake, have been a by-product.
The
IAEA saw it as a possible positive step, even though the United States
said the gesture would not be enough to address allegations of covert
atomic activity.