Satellite Images show suspicious facility in Syria

By LEE KEATH, Associated Press

Wed. Oct 24, 4:07 PM ET

Commercial satellite images show construction in Syria that resembles the early stages of a small North Korean-model nuclear reactor, a report said Wednesday, speculating that it was the site hit last month by an Israeli airstrike.

The photos, taken nearly a month before the Sept. 6 strike, show a tall box-like building near the Euphrates River that the report said was similar in shape to a North Korean five-megawatt reactor building in Yongbyon.

It cautioned that the Syrian building was "not far enough along in its construction to make a definitive comparison." The photo also shows a smaller building that the report says appears to be a pump station, which would be needed to provide water to cool a reactor.

The report was written by David Albright, a former U.N. nuclear inspector and now head of the Washington-based Institute for Science and International Security, and researcher Paul Brannan.

In Damascus, a Syrian Foreign Ministry official denied the satellite photos in the report showed a nuclear reactor.

"Syria strongly denies the reports that the targeted site is a nuclear facility," the official told The Associated Press, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the subject. The official described the reports as "part of a continuing campaign of accusations against Syria."

Syria has repeatedly denied it is building a nuclear facility, and President Bashar Assad has said that Israel bombed an "unused military building" in the raid.

The Israeli airstrike has been shrouded in mystery. Israel has been extremely secretive about the incident, only recently relaxing censorship to allow Israel-based journalists to report that its aircraft attacked a military target deep inside Syria.

Earlier this month, The New York Times reported that the strike had targeted a partially built nuclear reactor, made with North Korean help, that was years away from completion, citing U.S. and foreign officials. The Washington Post also cited U.S. officials as saying the building had characteristics of a small but substantial nuclear reactor similar to North Korea's facility.

The report offered no evidence that the site shown in the photos was the one hit by Israel. The photo was taken Aug. 10 by the private satellite imagery firm DigitalGlobe, and the report did not say if images of the site after the strike were available.

The authors of the report did not immediately return calls seeking comment.

An image published in the report shows a tall, square building in the desert about 750 yards from the Euphrates River, near the town of Deir al-Zour, 250 miles northeast of Damascus.

If the building does contain a reactor similar to the Yongbyon site, it would likely be a 20-25 megawatt gas-graphite reactor, large enough to make about one nuclear weapon's worth of plutonium each year, the report said. To build nuclear weapons from such a reactor, Syria would need a separate facility to extract plutonium from the spent fuel from the reactor, it said.

The roof of the building makes it impossible to see what is inside. The building is 47 square yards, similar to the 48-by-50-yard Yongbyon reactor, the report said.

Another structure is visible near the main building, which the report said could not be identified. Several trucks are also visible, along with heavy machinery tracks around the site, which "indicated recent construction activity," the report said. A wider satellite photo shows an airstrip located two miles to the north.

The report said the images left many questions unanswered, including how much of the construction was completed and whether Syria had obtained any reactor components.

U.N. diplomats last week told the AP that experts from the U.N. nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency, had begun analyzing satellite imagery of the Syrian site.

Diplomats familiar with the situation said that initial perusal had found no evidence the target hit by Israel was a nuclear installation. They emphasized that it was too early to draw definite conclusions.

Syria has not declared a nuclear program to the IAEA beyond a small, Chinese reactor it uses for research, which it allows the agency to inspect.

North Korea, which is in the process of dismantling its nuclear weapons program, provides missile technology to Syria but strongly denies accusations it spreads its nuclear expertise beyond its borders.

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Associated Press Writer Albert Aji contributed to this report in Damascus, Syria.

More than 755,000 on US terrorist watch list

Wed Oct 24, 7:17 PM ET

The US terrorist watch list includes more than 755,000 names and continues to grow, the US Government Accountability Office said Wednesday.

The list exploded from fewer than 20 entries before the September 11, 2001 attacks to more than 150,000 just a few months later, after the Terrorist Screening Center (TSC) was created in December 2003 to keep tabs on terrorist suspects, according to the GAO, the non-partisan investigative arm of Congress.

Including known pseudonyms of suspects, the list's 755,000 names as of May 2007 represents, in fact, around 300,000 people, according to TSC estimates.

Tasked with gathering data on individuals "known or appropriately suspected to be or have been engaged in conduct constituting, in preparation for, in aid of or related to terrorism," the TSC gets its information from Federal Bureau of Investigation intelligence and passes it on chiefly to immigration authorities.

Since 2003, the list has been used around 53,000 times to single out individuals for possible arrest or to prevent them from entering the country, the GAO said.

More often, however, people whose names are included on the list for reasons of caution are merely questioned and released, and left to face the same annoyance each time they enter the country, GAO said.

Despite the precautionary zeal, there have been mistakes, it said, adding that many suspects have been stopped by immigration authorities on arrival at US airports when their entries in the TSC list should have prevented them from boarding their planes in the first place.

Describing the list as "quicksand" that traps innocent people for the sake of security, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) has called on the US Congress to step in.

"How much safer are we when the government turns so many innocent people into suspects?," ACLU senior legislative counsel Timothy Sparapani said in a statement.

Putin visits Iran, sends warnings to US

By VLADIMIR ISACHENKOV

Associated Press

Russian leader Vladimir Putin met his Iranian counterpart Tuesday and implicitly warned the U.S. not to use a former Soviet republic to stage an attack on Iran. He also said nations shouldn't pursue oil pipeline projects in the area if they weren't backed by regional powers.

At a summit of the five nations that border the inland Caspian Sea, Putin said none of the nations' territory should be used by any outside countries for use of military force against any nation in the region. It was a clear reference to long-standing rumors that the U.S. was planning to use Azerbaijan, a former Soviet republic, as a staging ground for any possible military action against Iran.

"We are saying that no Caspian nation should offer its territory to third powers for use of force or military aggression against any Caspian state," Putin said.

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad also underlined the need to keep outsiders away from the Caspian.

"All Caspian nations agree on the main issue — that all aspects related to this sea must be settled exclusively by littoral nations," he said. "The Caspian Sea is an inland sea and it only belongs to the Caspian states, therefore only they are entitled to have their ships and military forces here."

Putin, whose trip to Tehran is the first by a Kremlin leader since World War II, warned that energy pipeline projects crossing the Caspian could only be implemented if all five nations that border the Caspian support them.

Putin did not name any specific country, but his statement underlined Moscow's strong opposition to U.S.-backed efforts to build pipelines to deliver hydrocarbons to the West bypassing Russia.

"Projects that may inflict serious environmental damage to the region cannot be implemented without prior discussion by all five Caspian nations," he said.

Other nations bordering the Caspian Sea and in attendance at the summit are: Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan and Azerbaijan.

The legal status of the Caspian — believed to contain the world's third-largest energy reserves — has been in limbo since the 1991 Soviet collapse, leading to tension and conflicting claims to seabed oil deposits.

Iran, which shared the Caspian's resources equally with the Soviet Union, insists that each coastal nation receive an equal portion of the seabed. Russia, Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan want the division based on the length of each nation's shoreline, which would give Iran a smaller share.

Putin's visit took place despite warnings of a possible assassination plot and amid hopes that a round of personal diplomacy could help offer a solution to an international standoff on Iran's nuclear program.

Putin's trip was thrown into doubt when the Kremlin said Sunday that he had been informed by Russian intelligence services that suicide attackers might try to kill him in Tehran, but he shrugged off the warning.

Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Mohammad Ali Hosseini dismissed reports about the purported assassination plot as disinformation spread by adversaries hoping to spoil good relations between Russia and Iran.

Putin has warned the U.S. and other nations against trying to coerce Iran into reining in its nuclear program and insists peaceful dialogue is the only way to deal with Tehran's defiance of a U.N. Security Council demand that it suspend uranium enrichment.

"Threatening someone, in this case the Iranian leadership and Iranian people, will lead nowhere," Putin said Monday during his trip to Germany. "They are not afraid, believe me."

Iran's rejection of the council's demand and its previous clandestine atomic work has fed suspicions in the U.S. and other countries that Tehran is working to enrich uranium to a purity usable in nuclear weapons. Iran insists it is only wants lesser-enriched uranium to fuel nuclear reactors that would generate electricity.

Putin's visit to Tehran is being closely watched for any possible shifts in Russia's carefully hedged stance in the nuclear standoff.

The Russian president underlined his disagreements with Washington last week, saying he saw no "objective data" to prove Western claims that Iran is trying to construct nuclear weapons.

Putin emphasized Monday that he would negotiate in Tehran on behalf of the five permanent U.N. Security Council members — United States, Russia, China, Britain and France — and Germany, a group that has led efforts to resolve the stalemate with Tehran.

In Washington, State Department spokesman Tom Casey said the U.S. government expected Putin to "convey the concerns shared by all of us about the failure of Iran to comply with the international community's requirements concerning its nuclear program."

Putin's schedule also called for meetings with Ahmadinejad and the Iran's Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei.

While the Kremlin has shielded Tehran from a U.S. push for a third round of U.N. sanctions, Iran has voiced annoyance about Moscow's foot-dragging in building a nuclear power plant in the southern port of Bushehr under a $1 billion contract.

Russia warned early this year that the plant would not be launched this fall as planned because Iran was slow in making payments. Iranian officials have angrily denied any payment arrears and accused the Kremlin of caving in to Western pressure.

Moscow also has ignored Iranian demands to ship fuel for the plant, saying it would be delivered only six months before the Bushehr plant goes on line. The launch date has been delayed indefinitely amid the payment dispute.

Any sign by Putin that Russia could quickly complete the power plant would embolden Iran and further cloud Russia's relations with the West. But analysts said Putin's trip would be important for Iran even if it yielded no agreements.

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Associated Press writers Ali Akbar Dareini and Nasser Karimi contributed to this report.