"U.S. also demands Syrian transparency on nuclear research"

[applegrove]

U.S. also demands Syrian transparency on nuclear research

by Joby Warrick at the Washington Post

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/us-also-demands-syrian-transparency-on-nuclear-research/2013/09/12/c51a1020-1af5-11e3-8685-5021e0c41964_story.html?Post+generic=%3Ftid%3Dsm_twitter_washingtonpost

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The Obama administration urged Syria on Thursday to come clean about its past nuclear research as well as its chemical arsenal, accusing President Bashar al-Assad of blocking access to facilities linked to a Syrian nuclear reactor destroyed by Israel in 2007.

The top U.S. diplomat to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said Syria’s two-year-old civil war was no excuse for its failure to answer questions about its alleged nuclear program, which Western intelligence officials believe was on a path toward making nuclear weapons.

“It remains essential that Syria fully cooperate,” Ambassador Joseph Macmanus told a meeting of the U.N. watchdog agency’s 35-nation governing board in Vienna.

Macmanus specifically pressed for access to three sites inside Syria that he said were suspected of having a “functional relationship” to the Deir al-Zour reactor destroyed by Israeli warplanes six years ago. One of the sites has been described by U.S. officials as a pilot plant for making the reactor’s uranium fuel




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