IAEA on bombed Syrian 'nuke site' : "three-man inspection team did not find obvious traces of nuclear material"
Ya think?N. Koreans cleaned out Al Kibar site months before IAEA showed up (Today's MENSA News headline!)
LONDON -- The International Atomic Energy Agency was said to have arrived to a suspected nuclear site in Syria months after a major clean-up by crews from North Korea.
Western intelligence sources said North Korea removed virtually all traces of nuclear equipment from the Al Kibar plutonium facility in northeastern Syria. The sources said that within three months another building was completed on the site.
"The clean-up took place in the first two weeks after the Israeli air strike," an intelligence source said. "The assessment is that the North Koreans removed everything."
The sources said Al Kibar, destroyed in an Israeli air strike in September 2007, had not yet received a shipment of uranium or other radioactive material. They said the Al Kibar program was headed by Chon Chibu, a senior nuclear official and scientist in North Korea.
What international agreement with NoKo on nuclear weapons?
On June 24, the IAEA completed a four-day inspection of Al Kibar. The agency, whose access was restricted by Syria, reported that its three-man inspection team did not find obvious traces of nuclear material.
"There is still work that needs to be done," IAEA deputy director-general Olli Heinonen said. "We will see in the days and weeks what will happen next."
Heinonen said the inspectors took environmental samples over a large area. In a June 25 briefing, he did not elaborate.
"We achieved what we wanted on this first trip," Heinonen said. "We continue our discussions, we took the samples we need to take and now it's time to analyze them and also look at the information we got from Syria."
The intelligence sources said North Korea, which on Juen 26 saw the lifting of U.S. sanctions, had constructed the 21-meter high plutonium production facility and was planning to begin operations when Israel destroyed the building in 2007. The sources said the reactor had not yet been completed.
The CIA has concluded that Al Kibar was meant to house a nuclear reactor modeled after that in Yongbyon, North Korea. The sources said IAEA has sought to determine the source of nuclear fuel for the Syrian reactor as well as the location of any reprocessing fuel plant.
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