By Greg Webb

VIENNA — Efforts to investigate alleged Syrian nuclear-weapon activities have been slowed by the recent killing of an intermediary working with international inspectors, the top U.N. nuclear official revealed today (see GSN, Sept. 23).

The announcement came in the final seconds of this week’s meeting of the International Atomic Energy Agency’s 35-nation governing board, which had just completed a debate over the agency’s investigation into a Syrian facility that U.S. officials alleged to be a nuclear reactor that was destroyed in a Sept. 6, 2007, Israeli air strike. U.S. intelligence officials later offered evidence that the site near al-Kibar was a nearly operational plutonium production reactor intended to fuel a nuclear-weapon program. ... The Syrian official was Brig. Gen. Mohammad Suleiman, a Western diplomat confirmed today. Suleiman was shot in the head at his seaside villa on Aug. 2 by a sniper positioned on an offshore boat, Reuters reported last month. ...