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Damascus: Syria yesterday endorsed criticism by the UN nuclear watchdog of an Israeli raid on Syrian territory and said the international community had been slow to condemn the attack.
Mohammad Al Baradei, chief of the International Atomic Energy Agency, said on Sunday that last month's Israeli bombing of an alleged nuclear site in Syria undermined the agency's global atomic work.
European diplomats in Damascus said Israeli warplanes struck deep into Syria on September 6. They said the site may have been linked to missiles supplied by North Korea but played down reports of a nuclear link.
"There have been attempts to justify this raid, the last of which was that it targeted a nuclear facility. Al Baradei's condemnation of Israel shows the falsehood of these rumours," Foreign Minister Walid Al Mua'alem said after a meeting with the Iranian foreign minister in Damascus.
"The raid constituted blatant aggression and the international community's tardiness in condemning it has been encouraging the aggressor," Mua'alem said.
The raid raised tensions between Syria and Israel, which have been escalating since the collapse of peace talks in 2000.
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