WASHINGTON, May 26 (UPI) -- Suggestions from the IAEA that Syria was likely working on a nuclear reactor confirms Washington's longstanding suspicions, a State Department spokesman said.
The International Atomic Energy Agency said in a restricted report that a site destroyed in a 2007 Israeli raid was probably a nuclear reactor.
"Considering all information available to the agency, the agency concludes that the destroyed building was very likely a nuclear reactor and should have been declared by Syria," Bloomberg News quoted the IAEA report as saying.
Mark Toner, a spokesman for the U.S. State Department, said the IAEA revelation confirms Washington's suspicions.
"It does confirm our longstanding concerns about Syria," he said during his regular press briefing. "The actual, or the attempt, by Syria to construct a clandestine nuclear reactor site is obviously a matter of concern, and we fully expect that the IAEA board will address this issue when it meets … next week."
Israeli jets bombed the Dair Alzour facility near al-Kibar in Syria in 2007. Intelligence officials believed the site was a nuclear reactor of North Korean design under construction since 2001.
Inspectors with the International Atomic Energy Agency found traces of uranium at the site that went undisclosed by Damascus.
