Syria referred to UNSC on suspected nuclear programme

[Bernkastel]

From the Guardian

The UN's nuclear watchdog has referred Syria to the security council for failure to co-operate with an enquiry into its suspected covert nuclear weapons programme.

The decision, by a 17 to six vote, with 11 abstentions and one absentee, at the 35-nation governing board of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), increases Syria's isolation. It reflects a formal judgment that it is not in compliance with the nuclear non-proliferation treaty after an IAEA report found that a site known as Dair Alzour, bombed by Israel in 2007, was "very likely a nuclear reactor" for producing plutonium, which Syria should have declared.

"Syria's nuclear intentions at Dair Alzour are clear; the reactor there was built for the express purpose of producing plutonium for possible use in nuclear weapons," Glyn Davies, the American envoy to the IAEA, said. However, the security council referral is unlikely to lead to sanctions in the near future. The council is not required to act, and Russia and China have signalled that they will oppose punitive measures. Both powers voted against Syria's referral, which was proposed by the US and 12 allies at the IAEA board meeting in Vienna.

Russia described the resolution as "untimely and not objective", and complained that its suggestions for changes had been ignored. The Russian ambassador to the IAEA, Grigory Berdennikov, said that there may have been some Syrian wrongdoing, but that Dair Alzour no longer posed a threat to international security. China agreed that the matter should have been resolved within the IAEA. The political split on the board will be a troubling for a UN body which has generally sought consensus.

Syria has insisted that the building in Dair Alzour was a non-nuclear military installation. But an initial IAEA inspection of the site in June 2008, nine months after it was bombed by Israeli warplanes, found traces of uranium and graphite. The IAEA report presented to the board this week said that Syria did not provide an adequate explanation for this, and failed to give permission for further inspections while refusing to answer IAEA questions.

Satellite photographs of the site showed extensive efforts to destroy evidence, removing wrecked equipment and burying the ruins of the building. The inspectors judged that the Dair Alzour building closely resembled a type of gas-cooled, graphite-moderated reactor used by the North Koreans to produce plutonium for their nuclear weapons. Although the referral will not lead to sanctions in the near future, Mark Fitzpatrick, a proliferation expert at the International Institute of Strategic Studies, said it was still significant.

"It demonstrates that a country can't simply block the IAEA's verification role by refusing to answer its questions," Fitzpatrick said. "Its greatest relevance is that it sets the stage for IAEA conclusions on Iranian weapons design."Western officials have been predicting for some months that the IAEA's director general, Yukiya Amano, would soon issue a judgment on the likelihood that Iran was carrying out work on designing a nuclear warhead. Iran was first referred to the UN security council in 2006 and has been subject to four sets of sanctions for its continued enrichment of uranium. A new referral from the IAEA on the basis that Tehran is working on a warhead could well bring more punitive action.

In his report on Iran to the IAEA board this week Amano, hinted he was coming closer to a conclusion, saying he had received fresh information about "possible military dimensions" to Iran's nuclear programme, and that Tehran had failed to answer his inspectors' questions on the matter.

However, the Iranian envoy to the IAEA, Ali Asghar Soltanieh, denounced the report as "not balanced and factual" and went on to insist that Amano was "not doing his job." Iran insists it has the right to enrich uranium under the non-proliferation treaty and announced on Wednesday that it would use improved centrifuges to triple its production of 20% enriched uranium, and move that production to an underground site near the city of Qom. Twenty per cent is well above the level of purity required to generate electricity and in technical terms, is well along the way to weapons grade uranium.

Davies said the Iranian announcement was "brazen", arguing that the IAEA's admission that it knows less than ever about Iran's enrichment activities was "deeply troubling."