IAEA report concludes that North Korea aided Syria in nuclear proliferation
Recently, a friend provided me a bootleg copy (thanks) of an International Atomic Energy Agency report implicating North Korea and its Syrian client in violating IAEA safeguards by developing a clandestine nuclear weapons capability. The IAEA doesn’t appear to have released the report publicly; it appears to have been leaked. With that said, it’s really nothing we haven’t known since the spring of 2008, when congressional pressure finally forced Chris Hill to lift his embargo on all information related to the North Korea-Syria connection. The greater significance of the report, if you can call it that, is the likelihood that it will soon reach the Security Council, thus giving China another opportunity to block, stall, water down, and generally provide further proof of its irresponsibility, bad faith, and malice. And for Russia to grasp at some degree of diplomatic relevance.
The Syria report concludes that all evidence points toward the site bombed by the Israeli Air Force in September 2007 being a nuclear reactor under construction, with North Korean assistance (the site is called Dair Al Zour in the IAEA report, and Al Kibar in this CIA video briefing for the U.S. Congress). Although the report says initially that “no nuclear material had been introduced” to the reactor, it later notes that the IAEA found traces of natural uranium nearby. Syria has repeatedly refused the IAEA access for follow-up inspections, something that isn’t likely to change as long as its “security” forces are fully occupied with machine-gunning demonstrators and torturing children to death, but I digress. The IAEA pronounces Syria’s explanation implausible: “[T]he features of the destroyed building and the site could not have served the purpose claimed by Syria.” It concludes that “the dimensions, shape and configuration of the destroyed building are comparable to those found in reactors of the alleged type,” specifically, the North Korean reactor at Yongbyon.
In spite of this overwhelming evidence, the IAEA Director General would like everyone to know that “he did not say that the IAEA has reached the conclusion that the site was definitely a nuclear reactor.” Thanks for that.
As an added bonus, I’ve also provided a similar report on Iran’s compliance with IAEA safeguards. Read both reports in full here:
I wonder if this Dair al-Zour is Deir ez-Zor which was the site of one of the largest massacres of Armenians in 1915.
Yes, Alec Macph, the reactor site was in the district outside that city. I didn’t know that this Ottoman massacre had occurred in an area that’s now within Syria. You could begin your Wikipedia research here.
Here is an objective view of North Korea..
http://redkorea.wordpress.com/