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UN nuclear watchdog chief sees Syria to restart talks

U.N. nuclear guard dog primary Rafael Grossi said he went to Damascus on Tuesday to reboot talks focused on cultivating self-confidence in the serene usage of atomic energy by Syria.

Grossi, Director General of the International Atomic Energy Company, met President Bashar al-Assad, who had extended the invitation, and Foreign Minister Faisal Mekdad.

We're prepared to start dealing with reigniting top-level discussion between the IAEA and Syria, focusing on building self-confidence in the serene use of atomic energy in Syria, Grossi wrote in a post on X.

Syria's state news firm also reported Grossi's visit.

IAEA inspectors last went to Syria in 2011, the year its civil war began after the government's violent crackdown on street protests versus Assad's guideline.

They were seeking to revive a stalled IAEA examination into activity at a website in Syria's eastern desert that U.S. intelligence had actually deemed to be a nascent, North Korean-designed reactor intended to produce plutonium for atomic weaponry, before Israel bombed it to rubble in 2007.

The Vienna-based IAEA also inquired about other websites that might have been connected to the Deir al-Zor center.

Syrian authorities have stated it was a non-nuclear military website, but the IAEA concluded in 2011 that it was highly likely to have been a reactor that should have been stated to nuclear non-proliferation inspectors.

(source: Reuters)