VIENNA/JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Western and Israeli security experts suspect Syria may have tons of unenriched uranium in storage and that any such stockpile could potentially be of interest to its ally Iran for use in Tehran's own disputed nuclear program.
They say natural uranium could have been acquired by the Arab state years ago to fuel a suspected nuclear reactor under construction that was bombed by Israel in 2007.
U.S. intelligence reports at the time said the site in Syria's desert Deir al-Zor region was a nascent, North Korean-designed reactor designed to produce plutonium for atomic arms.
Syria, ravaged by a war the United Nations says has killed 60,000 people, has denied accusations of a clandestine nuclear program. Its envoy in Vienna, where the U.N. nuclear watchdog is based, was not available for comment on Friday.
"Someplace there has got to be an inventory of fuel for the reactor. It doesn't make sense to have a nuclear installation, a nuclear reactor, without any fuel," proliferation expert Mark Hibbs of the Carnegie Endowment think tank said.
But, he added, "to my knowledge there hasn't been any substantiated accounts identifying where that material may be located." It would likely have come from North Korea, he said.
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