Syria planned to supply Iran with nuclear fuel, Israel says (Guardian, UK)

[jpak]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/jun/25/syria.iran

Israel believes that Syria was planning to supply Iran with spent nuclear fuel for reprocessing into weapons-grade plutonium from the site it bombed last September, and which is currently being inspected by the UN's nuclear watchdog.

The claim from an adviser to Israel's national security council, came yesterday as speculation mounts about a possible Israeli attack on Iran. The Israeli government officially backs UN sanctions to force Tehran to halt its uranium enrichment but has little faith they will succeed.

Details about the alleged Syrian reactor and the Israeli raid remain shrouded in secrecy. Syria denies it has or had a covert nuclear weapons programme and insists the Israelis hit an ordinary military structure being built at al-Kibar, in the country's north-eastern desert.

The US claimed in April that Syria had almost completed the plant with the help of North Korea, which evaded the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) checks and tested a nuclear device in 2006. Officials in Damascus accused the US of fabricating evidence in collusion with Israel, which unlike Syria and Iran is not a signatory to the nuclear non-proliferation treaty and is the Middle East's only nuclear power. Washington did not mention any link to Iran's nuclear ambitions.

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