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Syria denies nuclear programme
25/04/2008 21:14 - (SA)
Damascus - Syria's government denied US allegations on Friday that it was involved in a clandestine nuclear programme with North Korea and accused Washington of misleading Congress about the country's nuclear activity.
The Damascus government also accused the US of aiding Israel in last year's bombing of its territory.
Seven months after the bombing, the Bush administration said on Thursday that North Korea was secretly assisting work on a nuclear reactor in Syria and the facility destroyed by Israel was not intended for "peaceful purposes".
Syria has maintained in the past that the site was an unused military facility.
An unnamed Syrian government official, in a statement by the state news agency SANA, denied the US allegations.
"This campaign launched by the US administration is aimed primarily at misguiding the US Congress and international public opinion ... in order to justify the Israeli raid on Syria in September last year, which this administration apparently was involved in executing," the statement said.
A similar statement was issued on Thursday by the Syrian embassy in Washington.
Syria must come clean
Senior US officials said the US military was not involved in the attack, and the US government, although informed in advance, did not approve of it.
Syrian President Bashar Assad, in excerpts of a newspaper interview released on Friday, scoffed at the US claims that his country was building a nuclear reactor with North Korean assistance. He reiterated that the site destroyed by the Israelis was "a Syrian military position under construction and not a nuclear reactor".
"Is it logical for a nuclear site to be left without protection and not guarded by anti-aircraft guns?" Assad said in the interview with the Qatari newspaper Al-Watan. "A nuclear site under the watch of satellites in the middle of Syria in the desert and in an open location?" he added sarcastically.
The full interview with Assad, to be published on Sunday, was conducted earlier in the week before the White House alleged that North Korea assisted Syria in a secret nuclear programme.
The Syrian reactor was within weeks or months of being functional when Israeli jets destroyed it, a top US official in Washington told The Associated Press on Thursday, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter.
The official said the facility was mostly completed, but still had needed significant testing before it could have been declared operational.
The Bush administration said that after the reactor was damaged beyond repair, Syria tried to bury evidence of its existence. The US said Syria must come clean before the world about its nuclear activities.
- AP
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