"There was no graphite at all," at the remote desert site, the head of Syria's Atomic Energy Commission, Ibrahim Othman, told reporters after a closed-door briefing of the International Atomic Energy Agency.

"There was ... no reason for graphite to be there," Otman said.

Last week, a senior official close to the agency had said that particles of graphite had been found at the site, known alternatively as Al-Kibar or Dair Alzour, which was razed to the ground by Israeli bombers in September 2007.

The US alleges the site was a covert nuclear reactor being built with North Korea's help that was very near completion.

But Damascus rejects the claim, insisting that Al-Kibar was a disused military facility.

IAEA inspectors visited the site last June, taking a series of environmental samples to see whether there were any traces of nuclear chemicals that would back up the US allegations.

Already last year, the watchdog had revealed that a "significant" number of particles of man-made uranium had been found.

And last week, the senior official revealed that even more unexplained uranium had been found, plus traces of graphite, even if it was too early to determine whether it was nuclear-grade graphite.

"If the building was a nuclear reactor as they claim, then it would have contained a huge amount of graphite," Othman said Tuesday.

"And this bombardment would spread the graphite everywhere. It's not difficult to find graphite, if it was graphite ... They didn't find any."

The substance inspectors found may simply have been carbon and that could have come "from anywhere, it could have come from cars," Othman said.

The IAEA also effectively dismissed Damascus's claims that the uranium could have come from the Israeli bombs which flattened Al-Kibar.

The IAEA's "current assessment is that there is a low probability that the uranium was introduced by the use of missiles," it had said in its latest report.

"The isotopic and chemical composition and the morphology of the particles are all inconsistent with what would be expected from the use of uranium based munitions."

But Syria rejected the IAEA's findings.

"We don't accept their explanation. They found 80 particles in half a million tonnes of soil. I don't know how you can use that figure to accuse somebody of building such a facility," Othman said.

Syria is set to top the agenda at the spring meeting of the IAEA's 35-member board of governors next week.

In the report, IAEA Director General Mohamed ElBaradei urged Damascus to come clean about the exact nature of the site.

Syria needed to provide additional information and documentation, as well additional access to Dair Alzour and other locations, the report said.

Othman insisted that Syria would "continue cooperating with the agency, according to the statutes of the agency and according to the safeguards agreement that we signed with the agency."

But "we will not go beyond that," he added.

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