VIENNA — Syria has revealed that it has built a missile facility over the ruins of what the U.S. says was a nuclear reactor destroyed by Israeli warplanes, diplomats said Tuesday.
Citing comments by Syrian nuclear chief Ibrahim Othman at a closed meeting Tuesday, the diplomats said the new structure appeared to be a missile control center or an actual launching pad.
The two — both from Western delegations to the IAEA — demanded anonymity for divulging details about what Othman told the International Atomic Energy Agency’s 35- nation board.
Israel bombed the site in September 2007. While the Jewish state has not commented on the strike, Washington subsequently presented intelligence purporting to show that the target in a remote area of the Syrian desert was a nearly finished nuclear reactor built with North Korean help that would have been able to produce plutonium once completed.
Syria has denied secret nuclear activities but has blocked IAEA inspectors from visits beyond an initial inspection to the Al Kibar site.
Environmental samples from that trip have revealed traces of man-made uranium and graphite. But U.N. officials say it is too early to say whether the graphite — a common element in North Korean prototype reactors — had any nuclear applications.
Syria had previously said only that the site was military in nature and that it was being rebuilt.
But the diplomats said comments by Othman suggested that the facility now in place of the bombed target was either a missile launching command center or a launching pad.
