UN investigators have identified a previously unknown complex in Syria that bolsters suspicions that the Syrian government worked with AQ Khan, the father of Pakistan’s atomic bomb, to acquire technology that could be used to make nuclear arms, a private TV channel has reported.
The buildings in northwest Syria closely match the design of a uranium enrichment plant provided to Libya when Moammar Gaddafi was trying to build nuclear weapons under Khan’s guidance, it quoted officials as saying. The UN’s International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has also obtained correspondence between Khan and a Syrian government official, Muhidin Issa, who proposed scientific cooperation and a visit to Khan’s laboratories following Pakistan’s successful nuclear test in 1998.
The complex, in the city of Al-Hasakah, now appears to be a cotton-spinning plant, and investigators have found no sign that it was ever used for nuclear production. But given that Israeli warplanes destroyed a suspected plutonium production reactor in Syria in 2007, the unlikely coincidence in design suggests that Syria may have been pursuing two routes to an atomic bomb: uranium as well as plutonium. The channel said details of the Syria-Khan connection were provided by a senior diplomat with knowledge of IAEA investigations and a former UN investigator. Both spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue. The Syrian government did not respond to a request for comment.
