By Xinhua,
Damascus : Syrian Foreign Minister Walid al-Muallem denied on Monday that his country had been building a nuclear reactor at a site bombed by Israel last year.
Muallem made the denial at a joint press conference with his visiting Norwegian counterpart Jonas Gahr Stoere, which was the first official comments after a visit to the site by UN nuclear investigators last week.
“Syria would not have allowed the inspectors in if it had such a secret program,” he noted.
However, He said privately he wished his country could have such a program to match Israel’s nuclear might.
“As a private citizen, I wish Syria had this program quite simply because Israel has made huge advances in its manufacturing of nuclear bombs,” said the foreign minister.
Israel raided a remote site in northeast Syria last September, which was alleged by the United States as a nuclear reactor built with the help of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK).
Syria denied the charges, saying it was only a normal military complex. Israeli officials, however, made no comment on the nature of the target.
The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), which received U.S. photos of the site that prompted it to put Syria on its proliferation watch list in April, sent a team to visit Syria and examine the bombed site last week.
IAEA Deputy Director General Olli Heinonen after the trip said Syria’s cooperation was satisfactory so far but “there is still work that needs to be done.”
Unlike Syria, Israel, widely believed to have the only nuclear arsenal in the Middle East, has not signed the Non-Proliferation Treaty.