BURMA BECOMING THE FIFTH ASIAN NUCLEAR POWER WITH THE HELP OF N. KOREA

Hillary Clinton U.S. Secretary of State expressed her country's concerns recently about nuclear cooperation between North Korea and Burma's ruling military junta. On her recent Asian visit, she said that the alliance could destabilise the whole region.
"We worry about the transfer of nuclear technology" from North Korea to Burma, she said in an interview with Thailand's Nation TV.

Further in Phuket, Clinton again referred to the "concerns that are being expressed about cooperation between North Korea and Burma in the pursuit of offensive weapons, including nuclear weapons," she said.

Suspicions about Burma and North Korea came to the world's attention recently, after a US Navy destroyer last month began tracking a suspect North Korean ship reportedly heading for Burma under UN sanctions.


The following material based primarily on the contributions of Prof. Ball an expert on the matter with supporting material from Phil Thornton, along with the evidence of two defectors of senior rank in the Junta of Burma/Myanmar. Professor Ball and Phil Thornton spent two years investigating the Burmese military junta's nuclear programmes. Their report along with testimony from the defectors, have forced observers to conclude the uncomfortable probability of a Burma/Myanmar with a nuclear capability.


The Burmese Junta and North Korean Junta are now close allies. In June 2007 an investigation began with separate interviews of two Burmese defectors that would continue until early July 2009. The first interviewed was a senior Burmese army defector, on the Thai-Burma border, who had crossed the border into Thailand. He was extremely worried about the price his family would have to pay.

Before turning his back on his country's nuclear plans, he was an officer with 10 years of disciplined army service and a graduate of Burma's prestigious Defence Services Academy.

In 2003 he was selected by the junta to spend two years studying at Moscow's Engineering Physics Institute in the Faculty of Experimental and Theoretical Physics. He was sent to study engineering and did not know initially, he would end up in the nuclear project. He was part of a second batch of 75 trainees sent to Russia as part of Burma/Myanmar's nuclear programmes to train thousands.

Another civilian, who before defecting, worked as a bookeeper for a business tycoon and a colleague of the Burmese junta, including Than Shwe. The company he worked for organised the nuclear contracts with Russia and North Korea. He spoke perfect English and presented his reports with authority. Before defecting, he had interacted daily with the junta's elite in Burma.. He insisted Burma's publicly stated policies for having a nuclear programme were simply a cover.

"They [junta] say it's to produce medical isotopes for health purposes in hospitals. How many hospitals in Burma have nuclear science? Burma can barely get electricity up and running. It's a nonsense." The World Health Organisation ranks Burma's health system as the second worst out of 192 countries and the junta spends more than 40% of its budget on its military and less than 3% on health and education combined, it is highly unlikely Burma/Myanmar is developing or investing in a nuclear reactor for the health or benefit of its population.

What the defectors say, confirms transcripts of Burmese Army communications, on public record. It is widely reported that nuclear reactors have been built at eight or nine different sites.

Not everyone in South-east Asia agrees about the extent or the purpose of one site at Naung Laing. A senior regional security official with extensive inside information about the area disagrees.

"Before it was a heavily guarded 'no-go zone'. Now you can drive right up to the buildings. Villagers are allowed to grow crops again. Even though the signs say; 'Military Science and Technology Ministry' and there are soldiers, the level of security has been drastically reduced. I think it's now a decoy site, to distract people away from the Myaing area."

The Myaing reactor is located in Magwe division and is known as the "Nyaungone Project". It was part of an agreement signed with the Russian atomic agency Rosatom (the Russian Federal Atomic Energy Agency) in May 2007 to build a 10-megawatt light-water reactor using 20 % enriched Uranium-235, nuclear waste treatment facilities, an activation analysis laboratory, medical isotope production laboratory to train several hundred specialists for the nuclear centre.

A previous US State Department deputy spokesman, Tom Casey, reported that the US "wouldn't like to see a project like this move forward" without Burma/Myanmar having nuclear regulatory and security infrastructure in place.

Another "secret" or military reactor site that the defectors provided a large amount of detailed information on was built inside a mountain by North Koreans at Naung Laing. Both of the defectors agree the underground mountain facilities house another 10-megawatt light-water research reactor.

North Korean and Burmese/Myanmar junta's work on nuclear matters began in earnest in September of 2000, when an agreement was signed by Burma's Lieutenant General Thein Hla and North Korea's Major General Kim Chan Su. Four more contracts were signed in 2001-02.

The "official" agreements between the two countries covered nuclear related activities at two sites and involved North Korea to help with installing, maintaining, training and supplying equipment at the uranium refining and enrichment plant at Thabike Kyin. At the second reactor site at Naung Laing the North Koreans agreed to help with the construction of an underground facility and a nuclear reactor. In 2004-05 a tunnel wide enough for two 10-wheel trucks to pass each other was dug into the smaller of three adjacent mountains. The junta has taken steps to protect their reactors by installing air defence radar, to be "deployed" at the airbase at Pyin Oo Lwin and at the reactor's site.

In recent months, as North Korea struts its nuclear capacity it has been building closer ties with the Burmese/Myanmar junta by supplying arms and missile technology to them.

The defectors have stated that the junta's army have been building a nuclear research and engineering centre in the vicinity of Naung Laing village since 2002, south east of Pyin Oo Lwin in Mandalay Division. Pyin Oo Lwin is home to the Defence Services Academy, one of the defector's old alumni. One of the defectors was told, that after he returned from Moscow, he would be assigned to a special nuclear battalion at one of the nuclear sites in Burma.

''After I came back from Russia I was assigned to develop a system to fire 155 howitzers. But first I had to do three months training, run by [North] Korean technicians, on using artillery missile systems.''

Uranium mining takes place in more than 10 locations in Burma/Myanmar. At Taundwingyi, next to one of the uranium sites identified by the Junta's Ministry of Energy, the North Koreans have built a large underground bunker. In addition to these sites, high resolution imagery published by GoogleEarth in 2007 show what many believe is a uranium mine and related refinery at Myit Nge Chaung, about 23km from Mandalay. In April this year, it was reported that reactor-grade uranium for Burma's nuclear programme was being mined near Lashio in northern Shan State.

According to radio transcripts, Russian uranium prospectors made three exploration missions to Tennasserim Division in southern Burma in 2004-05. The explorers' movements were tracked as they flew from Rangoon on July 8, 2004, to Myeik and their subsequent prospecting around the area of Theindaw from July 18 to October 5, 2004.

Burma has at least two uranium refining and processing plants in operation for crushing, grinding, washing and refining the uranium ore into ''yellowcake'' , a concentrate of uranium oxides in powder form. "Yellowcake" is later converted to uranium hexafluoride (UF6) for enrichment to provide fuel for reactors or fissle material for nuclear weapons.

''They're aware they cannot compete with some of their neighbour's conventional weapons. The junta want to play nuclear poker with their neighbours like North Korea. They hope to combine their nuclear and air defence missiles. One of the defectors said the nuclear programme is known as the 'UF6 Project' and is the responsibility of a General Maung Aye.''

Both processing plants are close to the Irrawaddy River, one is just seven kilometres from the river and is near the Tha Pa Na Military Science and Technology Development Center and the other plant is near the Thabike Kyin township.

Barges are used along the waterways to transport the heavy uranium ore rather than rely on the junta's totally inadequate road system. One of the defectors trading companies controls most of the shipping in and out of Burma/Myanmar, so it was easy for him to organize moving the equipment to the nuclear sites from Rangoon.

"He arranges for army trucks to pick up the containers of equipment from the North Korean boats that arrive in Rangoon and transport them at night by highway to the river or direct to the sites."

The defector said that there were more than five North Koreans working at the Thabike Kyin plant. He said Russian cleaning machines were used to "wash" the ore and that Burma/Myanmar also provides yellow cake for North Korea.

GoogleEarth imagery published in 2007 shows a facility with what looks like four giant "thickening tanks" in which the uranium bearing solution is separated from the ground ore before being converted to yellowcake.



SO BOTTOM LINE, HAS BURMA GOT NUCLEAR WEAPONS?

The essence of the defectors testimony is that Burma has already got key parts of the nuclear fuel cycle in place. The defectors said that the army definetly "planned" to build a plutonium reprocessing plant at Naung Laing, and that Russian experts were already "teaching plutonium reprocessing" at the site.

A "nuclear battalion" was established by the regime in 2000 to work on the "weaponisation" aspects of the nuclear programme. It is based near the village of Taungdaw, just west of the Naung Laing complex. The operations component is in another underground complex in the nearby Setkhya Mountains. It includes engineering, artillery and communications on operational aspects of weapons design, delivery capability and a command and control centre.

One defector says that next year, Burma will have 1,000 people trained with access to uranium, in refining yellowcake and already has two light water reactors.

"You don't need 1,000 people in the fuel cycle or to run a nuclear reactor. It's obvious there is much more going on." he said

Burma has the ability to extract plutonium from the spent fuel rods and to separate plutonium-239 from plutonium-240 it needs for a plutonium reprocessing plant so it can produce seven to eight kilograms of weapon-grade Plutonium-239 a year, enough for one bomb a year.

The "secret" reactor could be capable of being operational and producing a bomb of their own a year, every year, after 2014.The Junta's nuclear weapons programme currently still requires external support beyond the rudimentary Russian training and North Korean assistance is essential with the current uranium refining capabilities and reactor operations. North Korea is more than interested in providing limited amounts of fissionable plutonium in return for yellowcake.

It is in North Korea's military interest, and in line with their nuclear posturing, to construct a secret plutonium reprocessing plant in Burma, complementing the secret reactor, in exchange for access to the fissionable product. The defectors talked explicitly of the regime meeting their nuclear programme objectives by having a "handful of bombs ready".

Unfortunately, it is not as bizarre or ridiculous as some neighbouring sceptics would like to think. Burma's regional neighbours, Thailand in particular, need to watch carefully, especially for signs of any reprocessing plant. If its confirmed the junta has built them, then the only possible explanation is that they also plan to build more bombs themselves, separate from any warheads already supplied by N. Korea.

Burma/Myanmar with nuclear weapons should be a worry for its neighbours, if the junta's treatment of its own citizens, victms to last year's cyclone Nargis is a benchmark. Their response was to treat it as a national security threat, by banning journalists, ignoring offers of outside help for weeks, while leaving their people to die in their hundreds of thousands.

Cities in the region adjacent to Burma/Myanmar like Bangkok, with a population of nine million cannot expect any more mercy from the junta, if there is any sort of nuclear accident or strike. Although curiously a certain Prof Dr Likhit Dhiravegin, a Fellow of the Royal Institute in Thailand, believes it would be better if the United States were to leave Asia alone. Japan and S.Korea rely heavily on American protection from North Korea's nuclear weapons. Thailand itself has increased its military budget to 83 billion Thai baht this year alone and is fostering closer ties with China.


Professor Desmond Ball works at the Australian National University's Defence Studies Centre. He is the author of more than 40 books on nuclear strategy, Australian defence, and security in the Asia-Pacific. He also served as the co-chair of the Council for Security Cooperation in the Asia-Pacific. Phil Thornton who is the author of Restless Souls: rebels, refugee, medics misfits on the Thai/Burma/Myanmar border.