UN investigators have identified a previously unknown complex in Syriathat 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.
There has been speculation about ties between the Syrian government and Khan for years. A hero to many in Pakistan for developing the country's nuclear bomb, Khan is considered the world's most prolific nuclear merchant. He supplied Iran with the basics of what is now an established uranium enrichment program that has churned out enough material to make several nuclear weapons, although Iran denies it intends to produce any. Libya also bought equipment and a warhead design from Khan for a secret nuclear program that it renounced in 2003.
In 2004, Khan confessed on TV to selling nuclear technology to Iran, North Korea and Libya, but he has never spoken of Syria. Khan later said Pakistani authorities forced him to make the confession.
The former investigator said Syria acknowledged to the IAEA that Khan made at least one trip to Syria to deliver scientific lectures, as the Los Angeles Times reported in 2004.
The former official said he has seen letters from Issa, then a deputy minister of education, written on official letterhead shortly after the 1998 nuclear test congratulating Pakistan for Khan's achievement. In subsequent correspondence, Issa suggested cooperation with Khan and requested a visit by Syrian officials to Khan's laboratory.
Issa, who later served as the dean of the faculty of sciences at Arab International University in Daraa, Syria, could not be reached for comment.
In a 2007 interview with an Austrian newspaper, the Syrian president, Bashar Assad, acknowledged having received a letter that appeared to have been from Khan, but said his government had not responded and did not meet Khan.
IAEA investigators homed in on the Hasakah facility after analysis of satellite imagery in the Middle East, sparked by a belief that Khan had an additional government customer that had not yet come to light. They identified the site, the largest industrial complex in Hasakah, after a 2006 report in a Kuwaiti newspaper claimed Syria had a secret nuclear programme in the city.
Satellite imagery of Hasakah revealed striking similarities to plans for a uranium enrichment facility seized during a Swiss investigation related to Khan. Another set of the same plans was turned over to the IAEA after Libya abandoned its nuclear programme. Libya told the IAEA it had ordered 10,000 gas centrifuges from Khan, most of which it intended for a facility that was to be built according to the plans. Centrifuges are used to enrich uranium in the weapons making process.
The investigator said the layout at Hasakah matches the plans used in Libya almost exactly, with a large building surrounded by three smaller workshops in the same configurations. Investigators were struck that even the parking lots had similarities, with a covered area to shield cars from the sun.
But the investigator said he had seen no evidence that centrifuges were ever installed there. The Hasakah Spinning Company has a website that shows photos of manufacturing equipment inside the facility and brags about its prices.
IAEA inspectors were allowed to visit the bombed reactor site once, but have not been allowed back for nearly three years. The IAEA asked to visit the site more than two years ago. But it has not pressed the issue, focusing its efforts on the bombed site.
Nor has the agency ever cited the Hasakah facility in its reports. Three other sites have been mentioned, but they are believed to have been related to the bombed reactor, not the Hasakah plant.
The IAEA issued a strongly worded assessment in May that said the targeted site was in fact a nearly built nuclear reactor. The agency's board subsequently referred the issue to the UN security council, effectively dismissing Syrian denials as untrue.
Syrian officials again refused new inspections after talks with the IAEA in Damascus last week, diplomats have said. The officials said they would provide new evidence that the bombed site was non-nuclear. Agency officials remain skeptical because Syria did not describe the new information or say when it would be provided.
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