The head of a UN team investigating allegations South Korean Olympic torch relay accompanied by protests ...
Relaunch of Israeli-Syrian peace talks possible ...
N Korea hits out at South leader ... that Syria has been working on a secret nuclear weapons programme says their work is off to a good start.
The IAEA official, Olli Heinonen, said inspectors had taken samples at the al-Kibar site in the Syrian desert.
The area was bombed by Israeli warplanes last year after Israel and the United States accused the Syrians of building a nuclear reactor there.
Syria adamantly denies having any kind of nuclear programme.
Mr Heinonen, deputy director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, was speaking on his arrival back in Vienna following a three-day trip to Syria.
"It was a good start, but there's still work that remains to be done," he said.
"For this trip we did what we agreed to. We achieved what we wanted on this first trip. We took samples which we wanted to take. Now it's time to analyse them."
Mr Heinonen also said he was generally satisfied with the level of co-operation by Syria.
In April, Washington released pictures purporting to show North Korean experts inside the construction, which it said closely resembled a North Korean reactor at Yongbyon.
Syria has repeatedly denied it has any nuclear weapons programme, or any such agreement with North Korea.
Syrian officials have said the bombed site was an unused military facility under construction, but deny that it had anything to do with a nuclear programme.
IAEA chief Mohamed ElBaradei has criticised both what he saw as a US delay in releasing information on the Syrian site and Israel's bombing of the site before his agency could inspect it.
(BBC)
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