WASHINGTON (AFP) — The United States said Monday it is "totally inappropriate" for the United Nations' international nuclear watchdog to offer Syria technical atomic information, given allegations that Damascus illicitly had tried to build an undeclared nuclear reactor.
State Department spokesman Sean McCormack told reporters that giving Syria sensitive information is "totally inappropriate, we believe, given the fact that Syria is under investigation by the IAEA for building a nuclear reactor outside the bounds of its international legal commitments."
"And then for the IAEA to be involved in providing technical information concerning nuclear activities would seem to be contradictory if not ironic," McCormack added.
The head of the Vienna-based UN International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), Mohamed ElBaradei, said however that the IAEA had no legal right to deny Syria help in a nuclear power project, as called for by a number of western states.
In Vienna, ElBaradei said Monday that "a state has the fullest right of membership until proven otherwise" when he spoke to a meeting of the IAEA technical assistance and cooperation committee at a closed-door meeting.
"People and countries are innocent until proven guilty," he said in comments, a recording of which were obtained by AFP. "And we continue to act on that basis."
The Egyptian-born diplomat was addressing the first day of a three-day meeting by the technical committee where it was scheduled to discuss a long list of requests for assistance in various nuclear projects.
Among the projects was an application from Syria for IAEA help in "conducting a technical and economic feasibility study and site selection for a nuclear power plant."
Western diplomats say that it would be "highly inappropriate" for the IAEA to approve such a project until Syria had cleared up allegations that it had been building an undeclared nuclear reactor at a remote desert site until the building was razed to the ground by Israeli planes last year.
The UN watchdog has launched an investigation into the allegations.
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