Iran, Syria in the spotlight at IAEA board meeting

VIENNA - Allegations that first Iran and now Syria have been engaged in clandestine nuclear activities with possible military dimensions were the focus of a four-day meeting of the UN's atomic watchdog that ended here Thursday.
While Iran came under heavy fire for failing to come clean on alleged nuclear weapons work that took place just a few years ago, Syria also found itself in the dock amid accusations it had been building a clandestine nuclear facility until the site was bombed by Israeli airplanes last September.
The Syrian issue was the last item on the agenda of the International Atomic Energy Agency meeting that wrapped up early afternoon and Syria addressed the IAEA's 35-member board.
The IAEA is to send a team of experts to Damascus on June 22-24 to investigate allegations that a building in a remote site in the Syrian desert had been a covert nuclear reactor built with North Korea's help.
The reactor at Al-Kibar was allegedly close to becoming operational, but was destroyed in the Israeli air attack.
A diplomat, speaking on condition of anonymity, told AFP that Syria had agreed to let the experts inspect Al-Kibar, but no other suspect site.
Another diplomat said the Syrian delegation had told the IAEA board that "there are no other sites related to this military installation that was bombed."
Damascus has dismissed the accusations as "ridiculous".
However, it wiped the destroyed site clean of rubble late last year and erected a new building where the destroyed one had stood, making any possible investigation by the IAEA more difficult.
The US ambassador to the IAEA, Gregory Schulte, said "Syria's obfuscation and concealment efforts raise many troubling questions."
The United States "calls on Syria to cooperate with the IAEA's investigation and to provide assurances there are no other undeclared nuclear activities," Schulte said.
The Slovenian representative to the IAEA, Bojan Bertoncelj, whose country holds the EU presidency, said the European Union was "deeply concerned" and "calls on Syria to cooperate fully with the agency, provide the necessary information and give all the access requested by the IAEA."
The Syrian issue looks set to become a separate full item at the IAEA's next board meeting in September, by which time IAEA inspectors will have visited the site.
Iran also came under heavy fire during the four-day meeting for failing to answer allegations that it had been trying to build a nuclear bomb until a few years ago.
But Iranian ambassador Ali Asghar Soltanieh said the matter was "over".
"We have given comprehensive responses, information and documents," Soltanieh told journalists.
"We have done our job. The matter is over," he said.
In his latest report on Iran, IAEA chief Mohamed ElBaradei accused the Islamic republic of withholding key information that could shed light on the so-called alleged studies.
These include nuclear research, engineering work and testing carried out until a few years ago that may have had a possible military dimension.
Iran claims that the allegations are "baseless" and the intelligence used to back up those allegations "forged" and "fabricated".
But the IAEA and Western countries insist that Tehran actively disprove the allegations rather than simply dismiss them as untrue.
Soltanieh denied that Iran had done no more than reject the allegations.
Six meetings had taken place between IAEA inspectors and the Iranian authorities in the run-up to ElBaradei's previous report in March. There had been 70 hours of discussions and Iran had turned over 200 pages of documents that disproved the allegations, Soltanieh said.
In addition, Iran had summarised its arguments in 30 pages of documents, including confidential information, that Soltanieh distributed to IAEA governors on Thursday, he said.
"We have answered every question. We have left no question answered," Soltanieh said.
He again dismissed the allegations as fake.
"The authenticity is the question. Quite simply the whole allegations are baseless. Nobody needs to prove it," Soltanieh said.
It was not only Western countries, however, that have called on Iran to respond to the weaponisation allegations.
The so-called Non-Aligned Movement (NAM), a bloc of countries including Cuba, India and South Africa that are normally supportive of Iran, said the IAEA was right to be asking such questions.