Nuke Agency To End Hushed-Up Syria Mission

Written by CBS News' George Baghdadi, reporting from Damascus.

U.S. officials and - off the record - Israel, claim it was a plutonium-producing reactor in the works.

Syrian authorities, who have fervently denied the allegations, have shrouded the visit by International Atomic Energy Agency visit in secrecy. No great surprise: It could well determine the fate of Damascus on the international stage.

There wasn't even official confirmation that IAEA chief inspector Olli Heinonen and his aids were in the country, as the government banned all Arab and foreign journalists from obtaining entry visas.

Just one privately owned daily, Al-Watan - which, like all Syrian media, is close to the government - made any mention of the inspection mission by the U.N. nuclear watchdog. Al-Watan only carried a commentary published by the Russian news agency RIA Novosti, highlighting Syria's strong denial of ever possessing a reactor.

A senior diplomat familiar with the Vienna-based IAEA said the visit by the three senior inspectors, which included a trip to the al-Kibar site flattened by Israeli war planes, went "well," but he declined to elaborate.

Israel has never commented publicly on the intended target of its bombing raid on Sept. 6, 2007, but the alleged Syrian nuclear program came into the spotlight in May, when photos were published in the U.S. that Washington pointed to as evidence of a secret Syrian reactor project.

Bashar al-Assad, the Syrian president, has recently told an Indian newspaper that the allegations were, "fabricated 100 percent," maintaining the building at the site was just a disused military structure in the northeastern desert, near the Euphrates River.

IAEA director Mohamed ElBaradei said last week there was no evidence that Syria had the skills or fuel to run a major nuclear complex. Syria's only declared nuclear facility is an ageing research reactor long under the watchful eye of IAEA monitors.

Under its inspection agreement with the IAEA, Damascus has an obligation to report nuclear projects at the planning stage. Israel refuses to sign the agreement.

Analysts believe Damascus opened its doors to the inspectors in hopes of preventing Iran-like global sanctions, and keeping up dramatic diplomatic gains that have come from a recent thawing of relations between Damascus and the West.

Syria has successfully started to break a long period of global isolation by helping to broker the Doha agreement which partly settled neighboring Lebanon's internal political dispute.

Amid a flurry of diplomatic activities, Syria also agreed to start Turkish-mediated, indirect peace talks with Israel. Most recently, Syria used its influence with Damascus-based Hamas leaders to help forge a ceasefire between the militant Islamic group which governs the Gaza Strip and Israel.

Most significantly, French President Nicolas Sarkozy has invited Assad to Paris in July to attend a Euro-Mediterranean conference and Bastille Day celebrations.

The mission of the inspectors, however, was limited to the al-Kibar site in the Syrian eastern desert, just 90 miles north of the Iraqi border. According to Western analysts, the agency may request further visits to clear up months of mystery that followed the Israeli strike.

The commentary in al-Watan suggested that America's nuclear claim is a "sword hanging over Syria... in what resembles a blackmail policy that might later turn into direct targeting."

The commentary added, however, that it remained unclear whether, "the United States will be satisfied with such an outcome, or will press on with its accusations to create a Syrian nuclear issue similar to the Iranian or North Korean ones."