Diplomats: 3 suspect Syrian nuke sites off limits

[maddezmom]

Source: AP

VIENNA, Austria - Syria has told fellow Arab countries that it will not permit an International Atomic Energy Agency probe to extend beyond a site bombed by Israel, despite agency interest in three other suspect locations, diplomats told The Associated Press on Tuesday.

The agency's main focus during its planned June 22-24 visit to Syria is a building in the country's remote eastern desert that was destroyed by Israeli jets in September.

IAEA chief Mohamed ElBaradei announced Monday that Damascus has agreed to an agency check of U.S. assertions that target was a plutonium-producing reactor that was near completion, and thus at the stage where it could generate the fissile material for nuclear arms.

The U.N. agency is also interested in following up on information that Syria may have three other undeclared atomic facilities. Diplomats and a nuclear expert told the AP on Monday that at least one of the sites is believed to be meant to reprocess nuclear material into the fissile core of warheads.



Read more: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080603/ap_on_re_eu/nuclear_syria;_

[Tempest]

1. If the bombed site shows no evidence

Then the diplomats were wrong and shouldn't be believed about the others sites.

[snappyturtle]

2. Nobody tell * this.....n/t

[Ian David]

3. The other three sites are probably just sex dungeons or something. n/t

[David__77]

4. Why should they apply different standards to themselves than the US does to itself?

Why not uphold national sovereignty? The US is not the only country on the face of the earth.

[Pavulon]

7. Syria signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) in 1969 (eom)

[David__77]

8. They should withdraw then.

Syria has the right under int'l law to withdraw from NPT. That would entirely be its sovereign right - even according to the UN.

[daleo]

5. Prove that the bombed site was a nuclear reactor

Otherwise it is just a series of fishing trips.

This is the same thing they did with Saddam - make him prove a negative, and keep upping the ante no matter what.

[darue]

6. most likely IAEA will end-up going wherever they want. this is just posturing n/t