Syrian Foreign Minister Walid Muallem said on Monday that his country had no nuclear programme but that he wished that it did in the face of Israel's undeclared nuclear arsenal.
Muallem was speaking a week after a UN team inspected a desert facility in northeastern Syria that Israel bombed last year and which the United States says was a nuclear reactor being built with North Korean help and nearing completion.
"I speak as a Syrian citizen. If Syria had such a secret programme it would not have allowed them (the UN inspectors) to visit that site," Muallem told a joint news conference with visiting Norwegian counterpart Jonas Gahr Stoere.
"But as a Syrian citizen I would have wanted Syria to have such a programme because Israel has made huge strides in making nuclear bombs," Muallem added.
A team from the International Atomic Energy Agency made a three-day trip to Syria last week during which it visited the Al-Kibar site at the centre of the US allegations.
Syria has acknowledged that the facility was a military one but says it was disused.
The UN watchdog's deputy director general Olli Heinonen who led the three-member team said the probe got off "to a good start"
"We achieved what we wanted on this first trip. We took samples which we wanted to take. Now it's time to analyse them," Heinonen told reporters on his return to the watchdog's headquarters in Vienna on Wednesday.
