If confirmed, Thursday’s report by the Sueddeutsche Zeitung newspaper would add to Western fears that the Arab state had engaged in covert nuclear activity before the Israeli attack and may increase pressure for action by the UN nuclear watchdog.
The Institute for Science and International Security (Isis) said the operational status of what it suspected was a small uranium conversion facility near the town of Marj as Sultan was not known.
“However, there is suspicion that Syria may have emptied the buildings prior to mid-2008 and taken steps to disguise previous activities at the site,” it said in its analysis.
For more than two years Syria has refused to allow UN inspectors to revisit a site destroyed by Israel in September 2007.
Sueddeutsche Zeitung said it had obtained photographs supposed to have been taken from inside two buildings at another location, near Marj as Sultan, about 15 kilometres east of the capital and bordering a military site.
“Together with other information they allow for the first time credible suspicion that Syria was in the process of setting up a facility for uranium conversion – a preliminary stage for producing fuel rods which could be used in the suspected reactor,” it said.
Special inspection
Isis said the Marj as Sultan complex may have been functionally linked to the Dair Alzour facility, also known as al-Kibar, attacked by Israel more than three years ago.
“Syria knew that the IAEA would want to visit these sites,” said ISIS research analyst Paul Brannan.
The IAEA is due to issue its quarterly reports about Iran and Syria this month. The United States has suggested that the IAEA may need to consider invoking its “special inspection” mechanism to give it authority to look anywhere necessary in Syria at short notice.
Published in The Express Tribune, February 25th, 2011.
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