U.N. atom watchdog faces search mission in Syria

VIENNA (Reuters) - U.N. inspectors go to Syria on Sunday to probe allegations of covert nuclear work at a site where Israeli warplanes destroyed a desert complex at the heart of Western suspicions.

But ferreting out the truth may be hard nine months after the attack.

The International Atomic Energy Agency added Syria to its proliferation watch list in April after the United States passed on intelligence imagery said to show a nascent reactor that could have yielded plutonium for atom bombs.

Washington said Syria, an ally of Iran whose shadowy uranium enrichment program has been under IAEA investigation for five years, almost completed the plant with North Korean know-how.

Satellite pictures show the site was razed after the Israeli bombing in a possible cover-up, nuclear analysts say.

But the IAEA's chief says there is no evidence Syria had the skills or fuel to run a major nuclear complex, and that a U.S. failure to alert inspectors before Israel's air strike last year would make it hard to verify what the target actually was.

"We will do everything in our power to clear things up. I take these accusations very seriously," Mohamed ElBaradei, referring to the June 22-24 mission headed by his deputy, said in a German media interview on June 7.

"But it is doubtful that we will find anything there now, assuming there was anything there in the first place."

Follow-up IAEA missions will be necessary to get to the bottom of the mystery, Western diplomats say.

Washington took issue with ElBaradei's suggestion Syria, whose only declared nuclear facility is an old research reactor under IAEA monitoring, looked unable to develop atomic power.

"The reality here is that there's some pretty strong evidence out there about what Syria was doing...It's important that the IAEA be allowed to fully investigate that facility and any any other one that they might find of interest to them," State Department spokesman Tom Casey said on Tuesday.

Syria has denied concealing anything from the U.N. nuclear watchdog in possible violation of the Non-Proliferation Treaty.

Damascus has said the U.S. photos were fabricated or doctored and that Israel's target in remote northeast Syria near the Iraq border was a military building under construction.

LIMITED COOPERATION?

Syria told a meeting of the IAEA's 35-nation governing board in Vienna two weeks ago it would cooperate with the inquiry and grant access to the al-Kibar site struck by Israeli warplanes.

Satellite photographs taken since then show the area was bulldozed and cleansed of the remains, with a new building erected there, independent U.S. nuclear analysts say.

Arab diplomats at the IAEA meeting briefed separately by Syria said it refused agency requests to examine three other sites on national security grounds, asserting these were conventional military bases only and off-limits.

Other diplomats said IAEA wanted to check these places for a possible source of fuel for the alleged reactor, or relevant equipment, as none was found in U.S. pictures of al-Kibar.

The IAEA team will be led by Olli Heinonen, head of its global inspectorate, and include two nuclear technology experts familiar with Syria, diplomats said. They were set to have a range of talks in Damascus around a day trip to al-Kibar.

"The delegation will want Syria to explain what was at the (bombed) site. If Syria still says it was no reactor, they will want information to substantiate that. There is a plan to take samples on the spot," said a senior diplomat close to the IAEA.

"They will explain why the agency wants to see other sites. That doesn't have to happen (on this trip). If the IAEA doesn't get acceptable answers now, inspectors can go back next month and try again, and so on. This will be a process."

ElBaradei has demanded "absolute transparency" from Syria.

"Don't expect much from this trip, given Syria's extensive efforts to remove incriminating evidence and the restrictions they will put on where the IAEA can go," said Mark Fitzpatrick at the International Institute for Strategic Studies.

"But the IAEA in the past has found things that the hosts didn't expect, as in North Korea... So it's possible Syria will be surprised. If the IAEA doesn't find anything (this time), it shouldn't be taken as any exoneration of Syria."

(Editing by Samia Nakhoul)