The U.N. nuclear watchdog has found traces of uranium in Syria in its investigation into a building Israel destroyed in 2007 that the agency has long believed was probably an undeclared nuclear reactor, it said in a report to member states on Monday.
The government of now-deposed Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad said the Deir al-Zor site that included the building was a conventional military base.
The International Atomic Energy Agency concluded in 2011 the building was “very likely” to have been a reactor built in secret that Damascus should have declared to it.
The agency has been trying since then to come to a definitive conclusion, and under a renewed push last year it was able to take environmental samples at three unnamed locations “that were allegedly functionally related” to Deir al-Zor, it said in the confidential report seen by Reporters.
The agency found “a significant number of natural uranium particles in samples taken at one of the three locations. The analysis of these particles indicated that the uranium is of anthropogenic origin, i.e. that it was produced as a result of chemical processing,” the report said.
The term “natural” indicates the uranium was not enriched. The report did not come to a conclusion as to what the traces found mean.
“The current Syrian authorities indicated that they had no information that might explain the presence of such uranium particles,” the report said, adding that the Islamist-led government had granted the IAEA access to the site concerned again in June this year to take more environmental samples.
At a meeting the same month between IAEA chief Rafael Grossi and Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa, “Syria agreed to cooperate with the Agency, through full transparency, to address Syria’s past nuclear activities”, the report said.
At that meeting, Grossi asked for Syria’s help in returning to Deir al-Zor itself “in the next few months in order to conduct further analysis, access relevant documentation and to talk to those involved in Syria’s past nuclear activities”.
The report said the IAEA was still planning to visit Deir al-Zor and would evaluate the results of the environmental samples taken at the other site.
“Once this process has been completed and the results evaluated, there will be an opportunity to clarify and resolve the outstanding safeguards issues related to Syria’s past nuclear activities and to bring the matter to a close,” it said.
(Reporting by Francois Murphy; )
