Facing criticism from international nuclear inspectors, Israel said it is cooperating with the investigation into an alleged Syrian nuclear reactor that was destroyed last year by an Israeli air attack, Haaretz reported today (see GSN, Dec. 1).
Mohamed ElBaradei, head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, has complained repeatedly that Israel destroyed the site without raising its concerns first to the agency. Syria quickly razed the site further and agency inspectors did not visit the facility until several months after the attack. Most recently, ElBaradei said last month that nations with satellite imagery of the location were not providing needed pictures to aid his investigation (see GSN, Nov. 25).
An Israeli source, however, said his nation was trying to assist ElBaradei, Haaretz reported.
"We are finding our own ways to relay the information that needs to be relayed," the source said (Yossi Melman, Haaretz, Dec. 18).
The issue spurred a testy exchange this month in the Wall Street Journal.
In a letter to the editor, IAEA spokeswoman Melissa Fleming criticized Israel.
"Instead of providing the IAEA with images of a building alleged to be a reactor, Israel unilaterally bombed the installation. Meanwhile, information was withheld from the IAEA for more than six months, by which time Syria had cleaned away the rubble and built a new facility. This made the agency's verification work difficult and complex," Fleming said. "The results, so far, are inconclusive and the verification process continues. To aid his inspectors, IAEA chief Mohamed ElBaradei is calling on Syria to provide maximum transparency. He is also calling on other states, including Israel, that have inexplicably withheld critical information on the site, particularly the images from the immediate aftermath, to provide that information to the IAEA" (Melissa Fleming, Wall Street Journal I, Dec. 2).
Nili Lipshitz of the Israeli Atomic Energy Commission replied the following week.
"Each time the agency comes under political criticism for handling of a Middle Eastern country's flagrant breaches of its obligations under the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty or its safeguards agreement, the agency immediately resorts to publicly invoking Israel's name," she wrote.
"If the agency needs relevant commercial satellite images to ascertain its findings on the Syrian site currently under investigation, it should obtain them. Nothing should stand in the way of the agency's search for evidence," Lipshitz added. "The claim that Israel is withholding critical information on the site is nothing but a smoke screen" (Nili Lipshitz, Wall Street Journal II, Dec. 12).