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IAEA Confirms Syria Secretly Building Nuclear Reactor

   VOA News  April 28, 2011
   Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency, IAEA,
   Yukiya Amano speaks to the media during a press conference at the OECD
   headquarters in Paris, France, April 28, 2011

Photo: AP

   Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency, IAEA,
   Yukiya Amano speaks to the media during a press conference at the OECD
   headquarters in Paris, France, April 28, 2011

   The head of the United Nations nuclear watchdog agency has said for the
   first time that a target bombed in Syria in 2007 was a secretly built
   nuclear reactor.
   Yukiya Amano Thursday told a Paris press conference that the facility
   destroyed by Israel in an air strike was a "nuclear reactor under
   construction." As such, Amano said, it was not producing plutonium.
   Amano said the reactor was "allegedly" destroyed in the air strike.
   Syria has long denied the facility was related to nuclear activities.
   According to a March 7 statement by Amano to the IAEA, Syria has not
   cooperated with the watchdog agency since June 2008 to address issues
   related to the site.
   The conference otherwise largely focused on nuclear safety and disaster
   at Japan's Fukushima Daichi nuclear reactor, heavily damaged by the
   March 11 earthquake and tsunami.

   Some information for this report was provided by AP.

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