Foreign Relations

Syria Says Nuclear Material Will Stay in Its Custody Under IAEA Safeguards

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Courtroom-sketch editorial illustration of a joint news conference in Damascus: a bearded man in a dark suit and dark red tie stands at a plain dark wooden podium at centre right, reading from a sheet of paper held in both hands with slim microphones angled toward him, two tall Syrian flags on gold-tipped poles rising behind him against a pale ashlar stone wall and a patterned woven wall hanging filling the right edge, the backs of seated journalists' heads and shoulders massed across the darken

Syrian Foreign Minister Asaad al-Shaibani said at a joint Damascus press conference with IAEA Director General Rafael Grossi on Tuesday that nuclear material inherited from the ousted Assad regime is in Syrian hands and will stay there under agency safeguards. Al-Shaibani said Damascus disclosed it in a July 17 letter, called the step voluntary, and asserted what he described as Syria's right to use nuclear energy for peaceful purposes. Grossi said inspectors reached the previously undeclared site and collected samples that morning. Al-Shaibani said Syria opened a Deir Ezzor site after more than 18 years, the province where Israel struck a suspected nuclear reactor in 2007.

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