PrintOctober 29, 2008
Was Syria building a nuclear reactor?
Possibly the reason Mohamed ElBaradei and the UN agency he heads, the "watchdog" International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), recently won the Nobel Peace Prize was because they all think that "peaceful" countries such as Iran and Syria and even North Korea want to go nuclear to improve the lot of their citizens, and would never, ever, under any circumstances build a nuclear reactor for manufacturing nuclear weapons. And if they ever did, why he and his agency would stop them.
The real problem, according to ElBaradei, is that some countries, notably the US and Israel, don't trust their terror-supporting neighbors and enemies and make the situation even worse when they take defensive, pre-emptive actions, such as Israel apparently did in September, 2007, bombing an alleged under construction nuclear reactor in bordering Syria. Nope, there were no suspicious environmental samples or other proof that Syria would do such a thing ElBaradei persistently stated.
Now 13 months later:
Diplomats working with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said yesterday that the agency should push ahead with an investigative probe into Syria's nuclear sites. The assessment was given after fresh ground and air samples were taken from a site which Israel bombed on suspicion of being a secret nuclear reactor over a year ago.
Syria's IAEA delegate innocently stated
that he was unaware of the outcome of the latest results and would not make a comment until his country was informed on the findings.
According to an AP report, some brave IAEA officials dared to disagree with ElBaradei; on November 27 ElBaradei will present a report to the IAEA board on some new findings in Syria. The IAEA representatives also want to explore other Syrian sites which supposedly were involved with the alleged Syrian nuclear reactor and carefully study intelligence indicating North Korean involvement.
And to the shock of the Nobel Peace Prize committee, they might discover that Syria, North Korea and even Iran do not have peaceful intentions.
