UN Nuke Agency Sends Syria to Security Council
The U.S. won a divisive vote that sent Syria to the United Nations Security Council over an alleged nuclear-weapon facility destroyed by an Israeli raid in September 2007.
The International Atomic Energy Agency’s 35-member board of governors voted 17-6 today to report Syria to the UN’s top decision-making body. Eleven countries abstained from voting on the U.S. and European measure that called Syria a threat to “international peace and security” and Mongolia was absent.
“We had in the latest IAEA report a conclusion that was sufficiently robust that we believed we could take action on,” U.S. IAEA Ambassador Glyn Davies said after the vote. “It is not appropriate for a country to build a secret nuclear reactor. It had no civilian purpose.”
The UN nuclear agency concluded on May 24 that Syria was probably building a surreptitious nuclear reactor. The government in Damascus stymied IAEA inspections and limited access to the bombed site for more than three years. Investigators reported finding traces of modified uranium particles at the bombed Dair Alzour site that they said may have been residue from a reactor.
White House press secretary Jay Carney said the vote was a “significant action” to hold Syria accountable for its attempts to develop nuclear weapons.
‘Stonewalled’
“Syria has stonewalled and obstructed the efforts of the IAEA to investigate the nuclear reactor for years, refusing to provide access to associated sites, personnel and documents in violation of Syria’s freely-accepted legal obligations,” Carney said in a statement.
China and Russia led opposition to the measure, which will give the Security Council leeway to impose sanctions against Syria. Russia called the IAEA referral “unfair and not objective,” in a written statement to the board.
“Under current circumstances, there is no need to adopt a resolution on the Syrian nuclear issue, and even more unnecessary to refer the issue to the Security Council,” China’s IAEA Ambassador Wang Minzheng said, according to the state-run news agency Xinhua.
The Security Council referral coincides with a separate European resolution to punish the embattled regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. His security forces have killed at least 1,100 people and detained more than 10,000 since protests against his government began in mid-March, according to human- rights groups.
“When you have a situation where the permanent five members of the Security Council are split, that can make it tough for countries,” Davies said about the number of nations that voted against or abstained from voting on the measure.
“It is certainly a new precedent,” Peter Crail, a Washington-based Arms Control Association analyst, said in an e- mail response to questions. “Syria doesn’t have very many friends, and countries may have been more willing to accept standards of ‘good-enough’ evidence.”
To contact the reporter on this story: Jonathan Tirone in Vienna at jtirone@bloomberg.net
To contact the editor responsible for this story: James Hertling at jhertling@bloomberg.net
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