DAMASCUS: Chief of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Rafael Grossi on Tuesday visited Syria to resume talks to fostering confidence in the peaceful use of atomic energy by Damascus.
The UN nuclear watchdog chief held meetings with President Bashar Assad, who had extended the invitation, and Foreign Minister Faisal Mekdad.
Grossi in a post on social media platform X, formerly twitter said that the global body is willing to start working on reigniting high-level talks between the IAEA and Syria, focusing on building confidence regarding peaceful use of nuclear energy in Syria.
Syria’s state news agency also reported the visit of Grossi.
IAEA inspectors visited Syria in 2011, the year its civil war started after the government’s crackdown on street protests.
They were trying to resume a stalled IAEA investigation into activity at a site in Syria’s eastern desert that intelligence of the US had deemed to be a nascent. The North Korean reactor was designed to produce plutonium for atomic weaponry, before Israel bombed it in 2007.
The Vienna-based IAEA also sought details about other sites that may have been linked to the Deir Ezzor nuclear facility.
Syrian authorities insisted that it was a non-nuclear military site, but the IAEA in 2011 concluded that it was highly likely to have been a reactor that should have been declared to the IAEA inspectors.
