Syrian Ambassador to Washington Imad Mustapha spoke last Friday with reporters for more than an hour about the nature of the target of Israel's Sept. 6, 2007 airborne attack on what the United States and Israel say was a nuclear processing facility being built with the help of the north Koreans.

Mustapha said Syria had no plans to develop a nuclear program, even for peaceful ends. He said the building at al-Kibar was located in the middle of the Syrian desert, "without water, or even as much as a military checkpoint."

Yet a close look at the site – thanks to the wonderful magic of modern technology, compliments of Google Earth – shows several interesting aspects. First, is the remoteness of the facility. Whatever the Syrian military was constructing at that location was intended to be of the utmost secret, away from prying eyes and concealed by its isolation.

The building destroyed by the Israeli raid on that day, seems to have been ideally located amid rocky, hilly terrain, giving it natural protection and making it extremely difficult to access, except from what looks like an unpaved track half-a-mile mile from the main road. The box-like building was almost a square and measured about 46 meters (yards) across by 48 meters. Another building, which looks like it might have been offices or a housing unit was about 120 meters away.

The Syrian ambassador said the location was "in the middle of the Syrian desert without ample water or electricity." Yet measuring the distance from the facility to the Euphrates River, again thanks to the amazing things one can do with Google Earth, demonstrates that its distance is no more than half-a-mile.

Additionally, a CIA videotape indicates that the facility had an underground water reservoir nearby and an outlet from the facility to the river.

The quickest way to settle the matter, as mentioned in this column last week, would be for Syria to invite international observers composed of specialists from the United Nations' nuclear watchdog agency, the IAEA, and representatives of the media to visit the location.

But Ambassador Mustapha ruled that possibility out, saying the onus to prove that Syria was pursuing a nuclear program rested with the United States. That might well be the case, but if Syria has nothing to hide, then why not demonstrate to the international community its innocence in the matter?