Syria has offered to cooperate with a UN nuclear watchdog probe into a suspected reactor site after years of stonewalling, and a meeting may take place in October, the Vienna-based agency's head said Monday. US intelligence reports have said the Dair Alzour complex was a nascent, North Korean-designed reactor intended to produce plutonium for atomic weaponry, before Israeli warplanes reduced it to rubble in 2007. Syria has said it was a non-nuclear military facility. In June, the UN International Atomic Energy Agency board of governors voted to report Syria to the Security Council, rebuking it for failing to cooperate with the agency probe. Addressing the board Monday, IAEA Director General Yukiya Amano said Syria in a letter last month had “stated its readiness to have a meeting with agency safeguards staff in Damascus in October.” The purpose of the talks would be to “agree on an action plan to resolve the outstanding issues” regarding the Dair Alzour site, Amano cited the Syrian letter as saying. He said the IAEA had proposed that the meeting take place on Oct 10-11 “with the aim of advancing the agency's verification mission in Syria.” Meanwhile, Amano warned against complacency on nuclear safety six months after the Fukushima disaster prompted a worldwide re-think, presenting a draft global “action plan.” “We must not lose our sense of urgency,” Amano said at the start of a regular five-day board meeting of the watchdog in Vienna, according to the text of his remarks. Amano announced plans to publish new information backing up his belief that Iran may be working on a nuclear warhead — developments that leave his organization “increasingly concerned.” The comments by him were significant because it was the first time he revealed plans to release some of the most recent knowledge available to the IAEA leading to such worries. A diplomat familiar with IAEA affairs said Amano would seek permission from the agency members providing intelligence on the alleged warhead experiments before sharing them with the agency's 35 board member nations. Such new information would likely be detailed in the next report on Iran's nuclear activities in November or could be shared with board members at a special closed session.
