Uranium at Syria site comes from Israeli missiles: FM

DAMASCUS (AFP) - Traces of uranium on a site in northern Syria were residue from Israeli missiles used to bomb the area in Sept 2007, Syrian Foreign Minister Walid Muallem said on Tuesday.

"The traces of uranium found on the site come from Israeli missiles launched during the destruction of the building. It is the only plausible explanation," Muallem said.

The facility destroyed by Israel "was a military building that had no nuclear vocation," Muallem said at a joint news conference with visiting British Foreign Secretary David Miliband.

Last week media reports said that UN nuclear experts who visited the site in September had found atomic material.

International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Chief Mohamed ElBaradei said on Monday that "there was uranium" at the site but that this did not prove there was a reactor. "There was uranium but that doesn't mean there was a reactor ... It's not highly enriched uranium," said ElBaradei, whose inspectors visited the bombed Al-Kibar site last June, taking samples.

Washington claims that Al-Kibar, which was razed to the ground by Israeli planes, was a nuclear facility built with North Korean help and close to becoming operational.

Muallem also insisted it was soon to pre-empt the IAEA report. "Syria has signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and will wait for ElBaradei's report," Muallem said.

Miliband said he discussed the issue with the Syrian authorities but that Britain will issue no comments before the IAEA report is published officially.

Meanwhile, British Foreign Secretary David Miliband stressed Syria's importance in bringing stability to the Middle East after talks on Tuesday with President Bashar al-Assad.

In the first visit to Syria by a British foreign minister since 2001, the foreign secretary also praised the establishment of diplomatic relations between Syria and neighbouring Lebanon.

"Syria has the opportunity to play a constructive role in many aspects of peace in the region," Miliband said during a joint news conference with Syrian Foreign Minister Walid Muallem.

"There have been important constructive steps over the last 18 months ... in respect of relations with Lebanon but also some other" issues, he said.

Miliband said he had discussed with Assad efforts to forge peace in the Middle East and expressed to him Britain's satisfaction over Syria's establishment of ties with Lebanon and Iraq. Syria and Lebanon formally established diplomatic ties in October for the first time since they both became independent 60 years ago.

Miliband, who arrived on Monday in the Syrian capital and was to travel on to Beirut later Tuesday, is the first high-level British official to visit Syria since the Hariri murder.

Miliband also called on Syria to keep up the indirect peace talks with Israel that were launched under Turkish mediation in May. "We support the process and we wish good luck to those who are engaged in those discussions."

On Monday he told the BBC that Syria "can be a force for stability or it can be a force for instability" in the region.

For his part Muallem said that Syria wanted "to take advantage of the good ties that the West has with Israel in order to achieve a global peace" in the Middle East.

On the Palestinian situation, Miliband said that "Palestinian disunity and Hamas violence hurt the cause of Syria. The only route to a comprehensive peace is (through) politics."