BEIRUT — The head of the United Nations' nuclear watchdog agency surprised diplomats and arms control experts Monday by announcing that inspectors would visit Syria for two days to try to clear up the mystery of an alleged nuclear site destroyed in an Israeli airstrike last year.
Mohamed ElBaradei, director-general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, or IAEA, told the board of governors in Vienna that a team of inspectors would travel to Syria on June 22 to investigate the site. ElBaradei expressed frustration over the IAEA's investigation of Iran's nuclear program, which Tehran insists is meant for peaceful electricity generation and Western officials allege masks a drive to produce nuclear weapons.
The IAEA chief said it was "regrettable" that his agency had not made "the progress we had hoped for" regarding documents suggesting Iran was working on missile designs, uranium experiments and explosives testing consistent with a nuclear weapons program. He also strongly criticized Tehran.
"Iran has not yet agreed to implement all the transparency measures required to clarify this cluster of allegations and questions," he told the IAEA governing board.
The Israeli strike on the Syrian site in September was considered by many analysts as a warning to Iran about Israel's willingness to use force to prevent regional rivals from obtaining the capability to produce nuclear weapons. Israel is believed to have an arsenal of more than 300 nuclear warheads.
Officials in Damascus, the Syrian capital, have contended that the site Israel targeted was nothing more than an unused military building. Satellite photographs suggested that the site had been bulldozed, raising suspicions about the Syrian explanation.
In April, U.S. intelligence officials presented lawmakers with purported photographic evidence that the site was a plutonium factory being built with the help of North Korean engineers.
ElBaradei said that information about the site was also passed on to his agency in April. "Syria, like all states with comprehensive safeguards agreements, has an obligation to report the planning and construction of any nuclear facility to the agency," he said, according to a copy of his introductory remarks. "We are therefore treating this information with the seriousness it deserves."
