Syria’s new government has agreed to give inspectors from the U.N. nuclear watchdog immediate access to former nuclear sites, the Associated Press reported on Wednesday.
The director-general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Rafael Grossi, told the AP after meeting Syrian President Ahmad al-Sharaa in Damascus that he hoped to finish the inspection process in the coming months.
The IAEA’s aim is “to bring total clarity over certain activities that took place in the past that were, in the judgment of the agency, probably related to nuclear weapons,” said Grossi, adding that the new government was “committed to opening up to the world, to international cooperation.”
U.S. President Donald Trump announced last month that he was lifting sanctions on Syria.
Under former President Bashar Assad, Syria long operated an extensive clandestine nuclear program that included an undeclared nuclear reactor built by North Korea in the eastern Deir el-Zour province. The reactor site only became public knowledge after Israel destroyed it in a 2007 airstrike.
The IAEA leader told the AP that al-Sharaa—an ex-member of the Al-Qaeda terror group who has courted Western governments since seizing power in December—had shown a “very positive disposition to talk to us and to allow us to carry out the activities we need to.”
