DUBAI: There is no evidence Syria has the skilled personnel or the fuel to operate a large-scale nuclear facility, the head of the United Nations atomic watchdog agency said in remarks aired yesterday. “We have no evidence that Syria has the human resources that would allow it to carry out a large nuclear program. We do not see Syria having nuclear fuel,” International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Director General Mohamad El-Baradei told Al-Arabiya television.
In an interview with the Dubai-based television station, El-Baradei said the IAEA only had pictures of a site in Syria bombed by Israel last year, which resembled a nuclear facility in North Korea. The IAEA added Syria to its proliferation watch list in April after receiving US intelligence material, including photographs suggesting Damascus had almost finished building a nuclear reactor in secret before Israel destroyed it in an airstrike in September. Damascus denies any covert nuclear activity and says the site Israel bombed was a military facility under construction. It has said it would cooperate with a UN investigation into the allegations of nuclear activity.
