UN nuclear inspectors visit Syria nuclear site

Vienna: UN nuclear inspectors headed on Monday for an alleged nuclear site in Syria that the United States said housed a secretly built reactor, a diplomat said.

Syria denies it is hiding a nuclear weapons programme and insists Israel bombed an ordinary military structure at Al Kibar nine months ago.

The UN team was also due to hold talks with Syrian officials before returning to Vienna on Wednesday.

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) put Syria on its proliferation watch list in April after receiving intelligence photographs from the United States said to show a reactor that could have yielded plutonium, a nuclear bomb fuel.

IAEA chief Mohamed Al Baradei has condemned the Israeli raid and criticised the United States for failing to share its intelligence material on Syria with his agency much earlier.

But he has dampened expectations that the IAEA will find conclusive evidence so long after the September 6 bombing.

"It is doubtful that we will find anything there now, assuming there was anything there in the first place," he said.