Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) head Yukiya Amano on Thursday said for the first time Syria had tried to build a nuclear reactor at the site Israeli warplanes destroyed five years ago, the Associated Press reports.
Syria has refused follow-up access to the international nuclear watchdog agency for two years to the remains of a complex that was being built at Dair Alzour in the desert when Israel bombed it to rubble in 2007.
IAEA officials recently carried out an inspection of another Syrian plant earlier as it seeks to reinvigorate its stalled probe into suspected covert Syrian nuclear activity.
"The inspection is being conducted as planned," an IAEA official said, giving no further details.
The IAEA visit to the Homs acid purification plant in western Syria was prompted by U.S. intelligence suggesting Syria had tried to build another nuclear reactor suited to producing plutonium for atomic bombs.
Syria denies any nuclear weapons ambitions, but confidential IAEA reports from 2004 indicate the Homs site has had several tons of uranium concentrates, or yellowcake, as by-products. The IAEA helped Syria build the Homs facility in the 1990's.
The IAEA has cautiously termed Syria's acquiescence to inspections a "positive step." The United States, however, said the gesture was insufficient to address allegations of covert atomic activity.
Last week a German newspaper said Western intelligence agencies suspected that Syria may have been building a secret uranium processing facility near Damascus, possibly linked to the former Dair Alzour complex.