IAEA's 35-member board of governors meets in Vienna June 6

PanARMENIAN.Net - The UN atomic watchdog opens a week-long meeting on June 6, with the United States and its western allies looking to pass a resolution against Syria over its alleged illicit nuclear activity.

The traditional June session of the International Atomic Energy Agency's 35-member board of governors has a heavy agenda, ranging from the upcoming two-year budget to the nuclear disaster in Japan.

But it will once again be the long-running investigations into illicit nuclear programs in both Iran and Syria that will be the main focus of attention, AFP reported.

While Iran has tended to be the dominant issue at board meetings in the past, Syria looks set to take the hot seat this time round after IAEA chief Yukiya Amano stated unequivocally for the first time his conviction that a remote desert site that was flattened by Israeli bombs in September 2007 was "very likely" to have been an undeclared covert nuclear reactor.

Iran, too, will be in the spotlight after Amano, in his latest report, complained that the Islamic republic is continuing to stockpile low-enriched uranium, in defiance of multiple UN sanctions, and refusing to answer allegations of possible military dimensions to its contested nuclear program.

Iran responded at the end of last month, but diplomats who said they have seen the six-page reply said it contained nothing substantively new and, in the view of one diplomat, only confirmed that Tehran is "unwilling to change course from its policy of non-cooperation."