South Sudan detains oil minister and military officials in threat to peace deal

DAMASCUS: Syria’s new government has agreed to give inspectors from the UN’s nuclear watchdog access to suspected former nuclear sites immediately, the agency’s head said.

The International Atomic Energy Agency’s director general, Rafael Mariano Grossi, spoke in an interview in Damascus, where he met with President Ahmad Al-Sharaa and other officials.

He also said Al-Sharaa expressed an interest in pursuing nuclear energy for Syria in the future, adding, “Why not?”

The agency’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,” Grossi said. 

He described the new government as “committed to opening up to the world, to international cooperation” and said he is hopeful of finishing the inspection process within months.

An IAEA team in 2024 visited some sites of interest while former President Bashar Assad was still in power. 

Since the fall of Assad in December, the IAEA has been seeking to restore access to sites associated with Syria’s nuclear program.

Syria under Assad is believed to have operated an extensive clandestine nuclear program, which included an undeclared nuclear reactor built by North Korea in eastern Deir Ezzor province.

The IAEA described the reactor as being “not configured to produce electricity” — raising the concern that Damascus sought a nuclear weapon there by producing weapons-grade plutonium.

The reactor site only became public knowledge after Israel, the Middle East’s only nuclear power, launched airstrikes in 2007, destroying the facility. Syria later leveled the site and never responded fully to the IAEA’s questions.

Grossi said inspectors plan to return to the reactor in Deir Ezzor and three other related sites. 

Other sites under IAEA safeguards include a miniature neutron source reactor in Damascus and a facility in Homs that can process yellow-cake uranium.

“We are trying to narrow down the focus to those or that one that could be of a real interest,” he said.

While there are no indications that there have been releases of radiation from the sites, he said, the watchdog is concerned that “enriched uranium can be lying somewhere and could be reused, could be smuggled, could be trafficked.”

He said Al-Sharaa had shown a “very positive disposition to talk to us and to allow us to carry out the activities we need to.”

Apart from resuming inspections, Grossi said the IAEA is prepared to transfer equipment for nuclear medicine and to help rebuild the radiotherapy, nuclear medicine, and oncology infrastructure in a health system severely weakened by nearly 14 years of civil war.

“And the president has expressed to me he’s interested in exploring, in the future, nuclear energy as well,” Grossi said.

Grossi said Syria would most likely be looking into small modular reactors, which are cheaper and easier to deploy than traditional large ones.

Regarding the ongoing negotiations between the US and Iran for a deal over Tehran’s nuclear program, Grossi said he has been in “constant contact” with the parties.

“They are negotiating; it’s not us, but it is obvious that the IAEA will have to be the guarantor of whichever agreement they come to,” he said.

DAMASCUS: Visiting EU Commissioner for the Mediterranean Dubravka Suica said on Thursday that a €175 million (nearly $183 million) package for Syria was a “clear message” of support for its reconstruction.

Suica announced the package in Damascus on Wednesday, saying it would focus on sectors including energy, education, health, and agriculture, helping rebuild Syria’s economy, support its institutions, and promote human rights.

“I came here ... with a clear message that we are here to assist and help Syria on its recovery,” Suica said in an interview on Thursday.

“We want that reconstruction and recovery will be Syria-owned and Syria-led,” she said, on the first visit by an EU commissioner since a transitional government was unveiled in late March.

“We want to see Syria be a regular, normal, democratic country in the future,” she added.

Syria has been navigating a delicate transition since Bashar Assad was ousted in December after nearly 14 years of civil war.

The EU announced last month it would lift economic sanctions on Syria in a bid to help its recovery.

“This is a pivotal moment — a new chapter in EU-Syria relations,” Suica said on X, calling her meeting with President Ahmad Al-Sharaa “constructive.”

Like Syria’s neighbors, Western governments are keen to steer it onto the road to stability after the war triggered an exodus of millions of refugees.

Refugee returns should be “safe, voluntary and dignified,” Suica said.

The EU has not designated Syria as a safe country for returns “because we don’t want to push people to come here and then they don’t have a home,” she said.

The EU last month sanctioned three Syrian groups and two of their leaders for human rights abuses over their alleged involvement in sectarian massacres in the coastal heartland of the Alawite minority, to which Assad belongs, in March.

“We cannot pronounce one part of Syria safe and another not,” Suica said, noting that designating Syria a safe country needs “unanimity among 27 European member states.”

She said Syrian Foreign Minister Asaad Al-Shaibani would attend a ministerial meeting involving almost a dozen Mediterranean countries in Brussels on June 23.

A statement released on Wednesday said that the European Commission was “actively pursuing the integration of Syria into several key initiatives with its Mediterranean partner countries.”

“We want to see Syria united and inclusive, Suica said. 

“This is a process. It will happen step by step.”