The UN nuclear watchdog board reported Syria to the Security Council on Thursday for covert atomic work, a US-led move coinciding with Western condemnation of Damascus's crackdown on opposition protests. Russia and China voted against the proposal at the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), highlighting big-power divisions that may augur vetoes of any punitive measures by the UN council in New York.
It was the first time the governing board of the IAEA - the Vienna-based UN body tasked with preventing the spread of nuclear weapons - referred a country to the Security Council since it sent Iran's file there five years ago. With 17 votes in favour and six against, the IAEA's 35-nation board adopted the Western-backed resolution rebuking the Arab state for three years of stonewalling an agency probe into the Dair Alzour complex bombed by Israel in 2007.
US intelligence reports have said it was a nascent, North Korean-designed reactor intended to produce plutonium for atomic weaponry before warplanes reduced it to rubble. The IAEA gave independent backing to the US allegation in a report last month which said the facility was "very likely" to have been a reactor. Syria says it was a non-nuclear military facility.
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