Thu., April 28, 2011 10:30am (EDT)

U.N. Watchdog Says Syria Was Trying To Build Nuclear Reactor
By Mark Memmott
Updated: 10 months ago

"The head of the U.N. nuclear agency has said for the first time that Syria tried to secretly build a nuclear reactor," The Associated Press reports from Paris.

The wire service adds that "Yukiya Amano says that the target destroyed by Israeli warplanes five years ago 'was a reactor under construction' " something that Syrian officials have long denied, though it was reported at the time by The New York Times that the facility was a reactor modeled after a North Korean nuclear plant. Copyright 2011 National Public Radio. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/.