Syria enlisted the services of Abdul Qadeer Khan, the Pakistani scientist, in a covert programme to develop a nuclear weapon, it has been claimed.
Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and a satellite image of the facility in Al-Hasakah Photo: AP/GeoEye
By Adrian Blomfield, Middle East Correspondent
7:46PM GMT 01 Nov 2011
United Nations investigators say they have identified a previously unknown complex in the far north-east of Syria that bears a striking resemblance to a uranium enrichment plant Mr Khan planned to build in Libya, officials were reported as saying by the Associated Press news agency.
Further bolstering long-held suspicions over the scientist's connections with Syria, the UN's International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has obtained correspondence between Mr Khan and a Syrian official proposing co-operation, the officials said.
The twin disclosures provide the most compelling evidence linking the "father" of Pakistan's atom bomb and Syria. They also appear to confirm that the Syrian regime followed two separate tracks in its attempts to develop a nuclear weapons programme.
Bashar al-Assad, the Syrian president, has always denied links with Mr Khan, whose nuclear black market is thought to have supplied blueprints and technology to Iran, North Korea and Libya.
The president insisted that the only communication he ever had came in a letter from Mr Khan in 2001 offering Syria help to build an atom bomb. Mr Assad said he rejected the proposal.
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Undermining the president's protestations of innocence, the complex in the city of Hasakah appeared to be identical to designs for a uranium enrichment facility Mr Khan provided to Libya in the 1990s.
The plant was never built and Libya handed over details of the plans, along with other equipment and documents provided by Mr Khan, to international inspectors in 2003 when Col Muammar Gaddafi formally abandoned Libya's nuclear programme.
The facility in Hasakah shows no signs of ever having been used for nuclear production, investigators believe. The building now appears to house a cotton-spinning plant that advertises its wares on its own website.
Syria is believed to have abandoned its nuclear programme in 2007 when Israeli warplanes bombed what US intelligence said was a nearly-complete nuclear reactor in a desolate desert canyon east of the Euphrates river.
But the discovery of what is potentially a second reactor will raise troubling questions about the extent of Syria's nuclear programme.
The suspected reactor destroyed by the Israelis is believed to have been built with North Korean assistance – it was an almost exact clone of a plutonium facility at Yongbyon that provided the fissile material used in nuclear bomb tested by North Korea in 2006.
But Mr Khan is an expert in uranium, rather than plutonium, technology, suggesting that Syria – like Pakistan had done before it – was following two routes to acquire the bomb.
UN investigators will want to know what exactly Mr Khan gave to Syria, not least because his network has provided clients in the past with not just blueprints but the centrifuges needed to enrich uranium to weapons-grade levels.
International experts said the news came as no surprise. It has long been believed that Mr Khan has had dealings, which remain undisclosed, not just with Syria, but also with Algeria and Saudi Arabia. There is also speculation that Syria may have used two other reactors which have yet to be publicly identified.
"In the past there were reports about four separate sites (in Syria) – three more in addition to the installation that was bombed," said Uzi Eilam, a former director of the Israel Atomic Energy Commission.
"There is a theoretical possibility that the Syrians, in parallel to the plutonium course of action, also tried to build a capacity to produce enriched uranium."
Syria looks most unlikely to allow international inspections of the site. The IAEA reported Syria to the UN Security Council in June over its failure to co-operate with inspectors wanting to examine the facility bombed by Israel.
Facing an unprecedented insurrection against his rule in which more than 3,000 people have died since March, Mr Assad looks less likely to co-operate than ever.
On Tuesday it emerged that Syria had mined its border with Lebanon to prevent refugees fleeing its increasingly brutal military clampdown. The Assad regime also said yesterday that it had agreed a "road map" with the Arab League to end the violence, but the government's sincerity was rapidly questioned by the opposition.
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