Syria"s initial explanation about uranium traces found by the International Atomic Energy Agency on its territory do not square with the agency"s analysis, an IAEA report issued on Monday said according to the Deutsche Presse Agentur dpa. The document said that "no progress has been made since the last report" in August in finding out whether Syria was really building a secret nuclear reactor in the desert before the site was bombed by Israel in 2007. IAEA inspectors have found and analysed traces of man-made uranium, both at that site - known as al-Kibar or Dair Alzour - and at a small research reactor in Damascus. "The results do not support Syria"s earlier explanation for the origin and presence of the particles," IAEA Director General Mohamed ElBaradei said in his report. Following the IAEA"s tests, Syrian officials have now dropped their explanation that the traces of uranium found in Damascus was contamination brought in with other equipment. According to a senior official close to the Vienna-based agency, Syria now says that the material could be connected to experiments that were so far not known to the Vienna-based inspectors. The official said that this new version of events still had to be verified, but could be plausible. The nature of the reported experiments was not made clear. Concerning the traces found at al-Kibar, ElBaradei urged Syria to cooperate and let inspectors see the rubble of the bombed site, as well as documents related to the alleged nuclear reactor. The IAEA has made it clear that it does not believe that the uranium particles found at al-Kibar came from Israeli munitions, as Damascus alleges. --SPA
