UN Nuclear Watchdog Meets On Iran, Syria

VIENNA (AFP)--The U.N. atomic watchdog met Thursday for discussions on alleged illicit nuclear work in Syria and Iran.
The International Atomic Energy Agency's 35-member board of governors convened at the agency's headquarters in Vienna for two days of deliberations on recent reports on the disputed nuclear dossiers of Damascus and Tehran.
IAEA Director General Mohamed ElBaradei was scheduled to make an opening statement at the meeting, which is also the agency's traditional end-of-year gathering.
The Iranian and Syrian reports, circulated to the board last week, found that the IAEA was making little headway in either case.
Iran was continuing to defy U.N. demands to cease uranium enrichment, a process used to make nuclear fuel and the fissile material for an atom bomb.
And ElBaradei also complained that Tehran was still refusing to answer multiple allegations of past nuclear weapons works.
The report on Syria was the first the IAEA has issued after inspectors visited a suspected nuclear site in the remote Syrian desert in June.
The U.S. says the site, Al-Kibar, had been a covert nuclear reactor close to completion, until it was razed to the ground by Israeli bombs in September 2007.
IAEA found that Al-Kibar did indeed appear to share some of the characteristics of a nuclear reactor and that traces of uranium had been found there.
However, follow-up visits to both Al-Kibar and a number of other military sites in Syria, as well as access to documentation and individuals, would be needed to draw any definitive conclusions, the report said.
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