Red Ice News

The Future is the Past

Here We Go Again: Claims of "WMD" in Syria (Video)
New to Red Ice? Start Here!

Here We Go Again: Claims of "WMD" in Syria (Video)

Source: youtu.be
"The UN nuclear watchdog says it has discovered a secret facility in north western Syria that matches the design of a uranium-enrichment plant. The findings have raised suspicions that the Syrian government has been trying to produce nuclear arms. However there’s no evidence the building, which resembles a textile plant, has ever been in operation. The situation has led some experts to draw comparisons with the WMD allegations that led to the occupation of Iraq.."


Video from: YouTube.com



Syria nuclear weapons site revealed by UN investigators
From: Guardian.co.uk / Associated Press in Washington


A satellite image shows the buildings in Hasakah, Syria, that the IAEA believes could have been intended for use as a uranium enrichment plant. Photograph: GeoEye /AP


UN investigators have identified a previously unknown complex in Syria that bolsters suspicions the government in Damascus worked with Abdul Qadeer Khan, the father of Pakistan’s atomic bomb, to acquire nuclear weapons technology.

The buildings in north-west Syria closely match the design of a uranium enrichment plant provided to Libya when Muammar Gaddafi was trying to build nuclear weapons under Khan’s guidance, officials said.

The UN’s International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has also obtained correspondence between Khan and a Syrian government official, Muhidin Issa, who proposed scientific co-operation and a visit to Khan’s laboratories after a successful nuclear test by Pakistan in 1998.

The complex, in the city of Hasakah, now appears to be a cotton-spinning plant, and investigators have found no sign it was ever used for nuclear production. Given that Israeli warplanes destroyed a suspected plutonium production reactor in Syria in 2007, the unlikely coincidence in design suggests Syria may have been pursuing two routes to an atomic bomb: uranium as well as plutonium.

Details of the Syria-Khan connection were provided to Associated Press 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. It has repeatedly denied pursuing nuclear weapons but also has stymied an investigation into the site bombed by Israel. It has not responded to an IAEA request to visit the Hasakah complex, the officials said.

The IAEA declined to comment. Its examination of Syria’s programmes has slowed as world powers have focused on the popular uprising in the country and the government’s violent crackdown.

Syria has never been regarded as being close to having developed a nuclear bomb. There also is no indication that Damascus continues to work on a nuclear programme. If the facility in Hasakah was intended for uranium production, those plans appear to have been abandoned with the Israeli bombing.

Mark Hibbs, a nuclear policy analyst at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington who has spoken to IAEA officials about the Hasakah complex, said it is important to learn more details about the buildings.

"What is at stake here is the nuclear history of that facility," Hibbs said. "People want to know what did they intend to do there, and Syria has provided no information."

Syria has strategic reasons to seek a nuclear weapon, having been in a cold war for decades with Israel, a country believed to have a significant nuclear arsenal.

"A nuclear weapon would give Syria at least a kind of parity with Israel and some status within the region," said Anthony Cordesman, a national security analyst at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies in Washington.

[...]

Read the full article at: guardian.co.uk

Comments

Red Ice Radio

3Fourteen

Con Inc., J6 Political Prisoners & The Pedophile Problem
Kim Coulter - Con Inc., J6 Political Prisoners & The Pedophile Problem
Why European Culture, Art and Beauty Matter
Gifts - Why European Culture, Art and Beauty Matter

TV

Laughter: The New Weapon Of The Far-Right
Laughter: The New Weapon Of The Far-Right
London’s Fourth Plinth To Get Fat Black “Everywoman” Statue
London’s Fourth Plinth To Get Fat Black “Everywoman” Statue

RSSYoutubeGoogle+iTunesSoundCloudStitcherTuneIn

Design by Henrik Palmgren © Red Ice Privacy Policy