Syria site probe off to a good start: UN inspector

Syria gave U.N. investigators a good look at the site of what Washington says was a secret nuclear reactor before Israel destroyed it, but initial checks were inconclusive and more are needed, they said on Wednesday.

Chief U.N. inspector Olli Heinonen said his team was able to take extensive environmental samples at the remote desert location and the sensitive inquiry was off to "a good start", with Syria's cooperation generally satisfactory at this stage.

Heinonen, speaking to reporters on his return to Vienna after four days in Syria, said it was "too early" to draw conclusions about the nature of the site, bombed by Israel last September, and follow-up investigations could take some time.

Syria denies hiding anything from U.N. inspectors, saying Israel destroyed an ordinary military building and accusing the United States of spreading disinformation.

Heinonen said his team gathered environmental samples of "quite a lot of things" in search of traces of material that might point to what Washington said was a nascent, plutonium-making reactor before it was flattened.

"To a great extent, we achieved what we wanted ... and agreed to do ... on this first trip," said Heinonen, the International Atomic Energy Agency's deputy director-general in charge of non-proliferation inspections worldwide.

Pressed on whether his three-man team was able to see what it wanted to check and speak to relevant Syrian officials despite diplomatic reports its room for inquiry would be severely restricted, he said: "Yes, quite a lot. But there is still work that remains to be done. It will take a while.

The IAEA dispatched Heinonen's team after receiving U.S. photos of the al-Kibar site that prompted the U.N. watchdog to put Syria on its nuclear proliferation watch list in April.

The IAEA has criticized Washington for waiting until long after the Israeli raid to brief the U.N. nuclear watchdog about its suspicions that Syria, with North Korean help, had almost completed a reactor that could have yielded plutonium for bombs.

IAEA Director-General Mohamed ElBaradei said ahead of the inspectors' trip that he doubted they would find any useful evidence so long after the site's destruction.