Report: Myanmar seeking nuclear weapons
By DENIS D. GRAY, Associated Press Writer – Fri Jun 4, 3:53 am ET
BANGKOK (AP) – Documents smuggled out of Myanmar by an army defector indicate its military regime is trying to develop nuclear weapons and long-range missiles, and North Korea is probably assisting the program, an expatriate media group said Friday.
The Norway-based Democratic Voice of Burma said the defector had been involved in the nuclear program and smuggled out extensive files and photographs describing experiments with uranium and specialized equipment needed to build a nuclear reactor and develop enrichment capabilities.
But the group concluded in a report that Myanmar is still far from producing a nuclear weapon.
On Thursday, U.S. Sen. Jim Webb announced he was postponing a trip to Myanmar because of new allegations that it was collaborating with North Korea to develop a nuclear program.
Webb, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee on East Asia and Pacific Affairs, referred to documents provided by a Myanmar army defector.
Myanmar's military government has denied similar allegations in the past, but suspicions have mounted recently that the impoverished Southeast Asian nation has embarked on a nuclear program.
Myanmar's junta, which has been condemned worldwide for its human rights abuses, has no hostile neighbors. The military's prime concern is suppressing dissidents at home and battling several small-scaled insurgencies.
Last month, U.N. experts monitoring sanctions imposed against North Korea over its nuclear and missile tests said their research indicated it was involved in banned nuclear and ballistic missile activities in Iran, Syria and Myanmar, which is also called Burma.
The DVB report said Russia has also trained Myanmar technicians in nuclear and missile technology.
The group, which operates Oslo-based television and radio stations, said the defector, Sai Thein Win, was an army major who was trained in Myanmar as a defense engineer and later in Russia as a missile expert. It said he had access to secret Myanmar nuclear facilities including a nuclear battalion north of Mandalay "charged with building up a nuclear weapons capability."
It said the documents it obtained were examined by Robert Kelley, an American nuclear scientist and former director in the International Atomic Energy Agency who concluded that Myanmar "is probably mining uranium and exploring nuclear technology that is only useful for weapons."
The group said its report was based on a five-year study that indicated that North Korea was involved in assisting the program.
Documents obtained earlier showed that North Korea was helping Myanmar dig a series of underground facilities and develop missiles with a range of up to 3,000 kilometers (1,860 miles).
The group said the documents obtained from the defector show a number of components used in nuclear weapons and missile technology, including a missile fuel pump impeller, chemical engineering equipment that can be used to make compounds used in uranium enrichment, and nozzles used to separate uranium isotopes into bomb materials.
"The total picture is very compelling. Burma is trying to build pieces of a nuclear program, specifically a nuclear reactor to make plutonium and a uranium enrichment program," the report said.
By DENIS D. GRAY, Associated Press Writer – Fri Jun 4, 3:53 am ET
BANGKOK (AP) – Documents smuggled out of Myanmar by an army defector indicate its military regime is trying to develop nuclear weapons and long-range missiles, and North Korea is probably assisting the program, an expatriate media group said Friday.
The Norway-based Democratic Voice of Burma said the defector had been involved in the nuclear program and smuggled out extensive files and photographs describing experiments with uranium and specialized equipment needed to build a nuclear reactor and develop enrichment capabilities.
But the group concluded in a report that Myanmar is still far from producing a nuclear weapon.
On Thursday, U.S. Sen. Jim Webb announced he was postponing a trip to Myanmar because of new allegations that it was collaborating with North Korea to develop a nuclear program.
Webb, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee on East Asia and Pacific Affairs, referred to documents provided by a Myanmar army defector.
Myanmar's military government has denied similar allegations in the past, but suspicions have mounted recently that the impoverished Southeast Asian nation has embarked on a nuclear program.
Myanmar's junta, which has been condemned worldwide for its human rights abuses, has no hostile neighbors. The military's prime concern is suppressing dissidents at home and battling several small-scaled insurgencies.
Last month, U.N. experts monitoring sanctions imposed against North Korea over its nuclear and missile tests said their research indicated it was involved in banned nuclear and ballistic missile activities in Iran, Syria and Myanmar, which is also called Burma.
The DVB report said Russia has also trained Myanmar technicians in nuclear and missile technology.
The group, which operates Oslo-based television and radio stations, said the defector, Sai Thein Win, was an army major who was trained in Myanmar as a defense engineer and later in Russia as a missile expert. It said he had access to secret Myanmar nuclear facilities including a nuclear battalion north of Mandalay "charged with building up a nuclear weapons capability."
It said the documents it obtained were examined by Robert Kelley, an American nuclear scientist and former director in the International Atomic Energy Agency who concluded that Myanmar "is probably mining uranium and exploring nuclear technology that is only useful for weapons."
The group said its report was based on a five-year study that indicated that North Korea was involved in assisting the program.
Documents obtained earlier showed that North Korea was helping Myanmar dig a series of underground facilities and develop missiles with a range of up to 3,000 kilometers (1,860 miles).
The group said the documents obtained from the defector show a number of components used in nuclear weapons and missile technology, including a missile fuel pump impeller, chemical engineering equipment that can be used to make compounds used in uranium enrichment, and nozzles used to separate uranium isotopes into bomb materials.
"The total picture is very compelling. Burma is trying to build pieces of a nuclear program, specifically a nuclear reactor to make plutonium and a uranium enrichment program," the report said.
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Myanmar nuclear arms drive under way: media
Fri Jun 4, 5:50 am ET
BANGKOK (AFP) – Military-ruled Myanmar has begun a nuclear weapons programme with the help of North Korea, according to an investigation Friday, citing a senior army defector and years of "top secret material".
A new documentary shows thousands of photos and defector testimony revealing the junta's nuclear ambitions and a secret network of underground tunnels, allegedly built with help from North Korea, television network Al Jazeera said.
The revelations prompted a US senator to abruptly cancel a trip to Myanmar, formerly known as Burma, and the United States raised fresh concerns about "growing military ties" between the two pariah states.
Norway-based news group Democratic Voice of Burma (DVB), which produced the film, says "evidence of Myanmar's nuclear programme has come from top-secret material smuggled out of the country over several years," Al Jazeera reported.
The years-long investigation included hundreds of files and other evidence from a Myanmar defector, army major Sai Thein Win, who said he was deputy commander of a military factory heading up Myanmar's nuclear battalion.
"They really want to build a bomb. That is their main objective," he is quoted as saying in the film, broadcast by Al Jazeera on Friday.
A senior Myanmar official, asking not to be named, told AFP that the accusations were "groundless", without elaborating.
But the United States said it was worried about the military links between the two nations, said Geoff Morrell, a spokesman for Defence Secretary Robert Gates who is in the region for an Asian security summit.
"We are concerned with growing military ties with the DPRK (North Korea) and are following it closely to ensure that the multiple UNSCRs (UN Security Council resolutions) are enforced," Morrell told AFP in an email.
Morrell did not comment directly on the nuclear allegations.
US Senator Jim Webb was due to fly to Myanmar on Thursday but said it would be "unwise and potentially counter-productive" until there is further clarification on the suspicions of cooperation with nuclear-armed North Korea.
The findings "contain new allegations regarding the possibility that the Burmese government has been working in conjunction with North Korea in order to develop a nuclear programme," Webb said.
Files reportedly smuggled out of Myanmar by Sai Thein Win have been seen by experts including Robert Kelley, former director of the International Atomic Energy Agency.
"It appears it is a nuclear weapons programme because there is no conceivable use for this for nuclear power or anything like that," he is quoted as saying on Al Jazeera's website.
Myanmar, which has been military ruled since 1962, has previously been accused of violating a UN Security Council ban on North Korean arms exports, which was imposed last June.
Following a visit there in May, US Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs Kurt Campbell expressed concern about a suspected arms shipment from North Korea to Myanmar.
He called for a "transparent process" to be put in place as a way for Myanmar to assure the international community of its commitments to the resolution on North Korean arms.
President Barack Obama's administration last year launched a dialogue with Myanmar's military rulers, after concluding that Western attempts to isolate the regime had met with little success.
But Washington has sharply criticised preparations for this year's elections -- the first in 20 years -- as well as raising the nuclear concerns.
Fri Jun 4, 5:50 am ET
BANGKOK (AFP) – Military-ruled Myanmar has begun a nuclear weapons programme with the help of North Korea, according to an investigation Friday, citing a senior army defector and years of "top secret material".
A new documentary shows thousands of photos and defector testimony revealing the junta's nuclear ambitions and a secret network of underground tunnels, allegedly built with help from North Korea, television network Al Jazeera said.
The revelations prompted a US senator to abruptly cancel a trip to Myanmar, formerly known as Burma, and the United States raised fresh concerns about "growing military ties" between the two pariah states.
Norway-based news group Democratic Voice of Burma (DVB), which produced the film, says "evidence of Myanmar's nuclear programme has come from top-secret material smuggled out of the country over several years," Al Jazeera reported.
The years-long investigation included hundreds of files and other evidence from a Myanmar defector, army major Sai Thein Win, who said he was deputy commander of a military factory heading up Myanmar's nuclear battalion.
"They really want to build a bomb. That is their main objective," he is quoted as saying in the film, broadcast by Al Jazeera on Friday.
A senior Myanmar official, asking not to be named, told AFP that the accusations were "groundless", without elaborating.
But the United States said it was worried about the military links between the two nations, said Geoff Morrell, a spokesman for Defence Secretary Robert Gates who is in the region for an Asian security summit.
"We are concerned with growing military ties with the DPRK (North Korea) and are following it closely to ensure that the multiple UNSCRs (UN Security Council resolutions) are enforced," Morrell told AFP in an email.
Morrell did not comment directly on the nuclear allegations.
US Senator Jim Webb was due to fly to Myanmar on Thursday but said it would be "unwise and potentially counter-productive" until there is further clarification on the suspicions of cooperation with nuclear-armed North Korea.
The findings "contain new allegations regarding the possibility that the Burmese government has been working in conjunction with North Korea in order to develop a nuclear programme," Webb said.
Files reportedly smuggled out of Myanmar by Sai Thein Win have been seen by experts including Robert Kelley, former director of the International Atomic Energy Agency.
"It appears it is a nuclear weapons programme because there is no conceivable use for this for nuclear power or anything like that," he is quoted as saying on Al Jazeera's website.
Myanmar, which has been military ruled since 1962, has previously been accused of violating a UN Security Council ban on North Korean arms exports, which was imposed last June.
Following a visit there in May, US Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs Kurt Campbell expressed concern about a suspected arms shipment from North Korea to Myanmar.
He called for a "transparent process" to be put in place as a way for Myanmar to assure the international community of its commitments to the resolution on North Korean arms.
President Barack Obama's administration last year launched a dialogue with Myanmar's military rulers, after concluding that Western attempts to isolate the regime had met with little success.
But Washington has sharply criticised preparations for this year's elections -- the first in 20 years -- as well as raising the nuclear concerns.
*****************************************************
US concerned over Myanmar's military ties with N.Korea
by Dan De Luce – Fri Jun 4, 3:47 am ET
SINGAPORE (AFP) – The United States on Friday voiced concern over Myanmar's "growing military ties" with North Korea amid allegations the junta was working with Pyongyang to develop nuclear weapons.
The US administration was closely monitoring Myanmar's cooperation with North Korea in light of UN Security Council resolutions banning Pyongyang from exporting weapons or nuclear technology, Defense Secretary Robert Gates' press secretary said.
"We are concerned with growing military ties with the DPRK (North Korea) and are following it closely to ensure that the multiple UNSCRs (UN Security Council resolutions) are enforced," press secretary Geoff Morrell told AFP in an email.
Morrell did not comment directly on fresh allegations that Myanmar had enlisted North Korea's help to develop a nuclear programme.
But a prominent US senator, Democrat Jim Webb, abruptly cancelled a trip to military-ruled Myanmar on Thursday citing the reports.
Webb had been due to hold talks with detained democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi and the country's reclusive military junta.
US officials have long voiced worries about the cash-strapped regime in North Korea selling nuclear weapons and technology or missile parts abroad.
Washington previously accused North Korea of helping Syria build a plutonium atomic reactor, which was bombed in an Israeli strike.
Previous details of possible links between nuclear-armed North Korea and Myanmar, formerly known as Burma, have prompted concern in Washington, even though it has pursued a new policy of engagement with the junta.
"News reports published today contain new allegations regarding the possibility that the Burmese government has been working in conjunction with North Korea in order to develop a nuclear programme," Webb said in Bangkok.
The senator told journalists that a documentary, to be aired by news network Al Jazeera on Friday, contained claims by a former Myanmar military officer reported to have "hundreds of files" revealing the junta's nuclear ambitions.
The major reportedly has defected and says he was a deputy commander of a clandestine military factory that was the headquarters of Myanmar's nuclear battalion.
Webb also referred to an allegation by US Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs Kurt Campbell last month, on his way out of Myanmar, that the junta had violated a UN ban on North Korean arms exports.
The alleged violation of UN Security Council Resolution 1874 was "in respect to a shipment that may have contained arms from North Korea to Burma," Webb said at a news conference.
During a visit to Thailand last July, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said North Korea could be sharing nuclear technology with Myanmar.
The junta made no comment on Senator Webb's cancelled visit.
Last year, the US Navy tracked a North Korean cargo ship possibly headed for Myanmar, amid suspicions the vessel was carrying missile parts or conventional weapons.
The cargo ship was expected to stop in Singapore to refuel but instead turned back to North Korea. US officials touted the incident as a success for UN sanctions requiring countries to search North Korean ships in possible violation of UN resolutions.
North Korea's role in the region is expected to dominate talks at this week's annual security summit in Singapore, where Gates was due to confer with his Asian counterparts.
Before arriving in Singapore on Thursday, Gates told reporters on his plane that North Korea "seems even more unpredictable than usual".
International investigators on May 20 announced their findings that a North Korean submarine fired a torpedo to sink a South Korean warship in March. The North has denied involvement, and responded to the South's reprisals with threats of war.
by Dan De Luce – Fri Jun 4, 3:47 am ET
SINGAPORE (AFP) – The United States on Friday voiced concern over Myanmar's "growing military ties" with North Korea amid allegations the junta was working with Pyongyang to develop nuclear weapons.
The US administration was closely monitoring Myanmar's cooperation with North Korea in light of UN Security Council resolutions banning Pyongyang from exporting weapons or nuclear technology, Defense Secretary Robert Gates' press secretary said.
"We are concerned with growing military ties with the DPRK (North Korea) and are following it closely to ensure that the multiple UNSCRs (UN Security Council resolutions) are enforced," press secretary Geoff Morrell told AFP in an email.
Morrell did not comment directly on fresh allegations that Myanmar had enlisted North Korea's help to develop a nuclear programme.
But a prominent US senator, Democrat Jim Webb, abruptly cancelled a trip to military-ruled Myanmar on Thursday citing the reports.
Webb had been due to hold talks with detained democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi and the country's reclusive military junta.
US officials have long voiced worries about the cash-strapped regime in North Korea selling nuclear weapons and technology or missile parts abroad.
Washington previously accused North Korea of helping Syria build a plutonium atomic reactor, which was bombed in an Israeli strike.
Previous details of possible links between nuclear-armed North Korea and Myanmar, formerly known as Burma, have prompted concern in Washington, even though it has pursued a new policy of engagement with the junta.
"News reports published today contain new allegations regarding the possibility that the Burmese government has been working in conjunction with North Korea in order to develop a nuclear programme," Webb said in Bangkok.
The senator told journalists that a documentary, to be aired by news network Al Jazeera on Friday, contained claims by a former Myanmar military officer reported to have "hundreds of files" revealing the junta's nuclear ambitions.
The major reportedly has defected and says he was a deputy commander of a clandestine military factory that was the headquarters of Myanmar's nuclear battalion.
Webb also referred to an allegation by US Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs Kurt Campbell last month, on his way out of Myanmar, that the junta had violated a UN ban on North Korean arms exports.
The alleged violation of UN Security Council Resolution 1874 was "in respect to a shipment that may have contained arms from North Korea to Burma," Webb said at a news conference.
During a visit to Thailand last July, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said North Korea could be sharing nuclear technology with Myanmar.
The junta made no comment on Senator Webb's cancelled visit.
Last year, the US Navy tracked a North Korean cargo ship possibly headed for Myanmar, amid suspicions the vessel was carrying missile parts or conventional weapons.
The cargo ship was expected to stop in Singapore to refuel but instead turned back to North Korea. US officials touted the incident as a success for UN sanctions requiring countries to search North Korean ships in possible violation of UN resolutions.
North Korea's role in the region is expected to dominate talks at this week's annual security summit in Singapore, where Gates was due to confer with his Asian counterparts.
Before arriving in Singapore on Thursday, Gates told reporters on his plane that North Korea "seems even more unpredictable than usual".
International investigators on May 20 announced their findings that a North Korean submarine fired a torpedo to sink a South Korean warship in March. The North has denied involvement, and responded to the South's reprisals with threats of war.
*****************************************************
Large fire destroys over 400 shops in Myanmar
Thu Jun 3, 12:06 pm ET
YANGON (Reuters) – More than 400 shops were destroyed when a huge fire broke out in a town in northern Myanmar on Thursday, the second major blaze at a commercial market in the last 10 days.
The fire started in the early hours of Thursday in the commercial town of Monywa, about 840 km (520 miles) north of the biggest city, Yangon, and burned down 410 of the 550 shops at a market, local fire officials said by telephone.
Investigators were yet to determine the cause of the fire and there were no known casualties.
A huge fire on May 24 at the five-storey Mingalar Zay market complex in Yangon raged for almost 12 hours, destroying 870 shops and causing damage worth more than $21 million.
In February, at least 650 shops were reduced to ash when a fire broke out in Thingangyun market in Yangon, Myanmar's commercial capital.
Fires have become a major problem in Myanmar, often as a result of the overheating of batteries used because of chronic power shortages in the country.
A total of 528 fires broke out across the country in the first four months of this year, killing 25 people, according to official statistics.
Thu Jun 3, 12:06 pm ET
YANGON (Reuters) – More than 400 shops were destroyed when a huge fire broke out in a town in northern Myanmar on Thursday, the second major blaze at a commercial market in the last 10 days.
The fire started in the early hours of Thursday in the commercial town of Monywa, about 840 km (520 miles) north of the biggest city, Yangon, and burned down 410 of the 550 shops at a market, local fire officials said by telephone.
Investigators were yet to determine the cause of the fire and there were no known casualties.
A huge fire on May 24 at the five-storey Mingalar Zay market complex in Yangon raged for almost 12 hours, destroying 870 shops and causing damage worth more than $21 million.
In February, at least 650 shops were reduced to ash when a fire broke out in Thingangyun market in Yangon, Myanmar's commercial capital.
Fires have become a major problem in Myanmar, often as a result of the overheating of batteries used because of chronic power shortages in the country.
A total of 528 fires broke out across the country in the first four months of this year, killing 25 people, according to official statistics.
*****************************************************
China signs agreement with Myanmar on border stability
Thu Jun 3, 2010 4:37pm IST
By Aung Hla Tun
YANGON (Reuters) - Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao reached broad agreement with Myanmar about maintaining stability in restless border regions during a visit on Thursday that he said marked a new stage in ties, media reported.
Wen said he and Myanmar Prime Minister Thein Sein "reached a broad understanding on protecting the peace and stability of the (Myanmar) border regions" and signed agreements that Wen said "signified another step forward in bilateral relations", China's official Xinhua news agency reported.
"We are willing to deepen our friendship with Myanmar and expand cooperation, always acting as a good neighbour, good friend and good partner," Wen told Myanmar's prime minister.
China is one of the few countries that keeps close ties with the Southeast Asian nation once called Burma, ruled by a military junta largely shunned by the West. But relations have been frayed by unrest along Myanmar's remote borderlands with China.
Many of the hilly, remote areas on Myanmar's side of the border are run by armed groups drawn from a patchwork of ethnic minorities resistant to direct rule by the military government.
Some are narco-states producing and selling drugs into China, and the Myanmar military over ran one of the weakest groups last year, sending about 37,000 refugees streaming into China.
The agreements signed in the two leaders' presence included ones on a natural gas pipeline, a hydro project, trade and finance, reported Xinhua. China also offered more aid, the news agency said, without giving details.
The deals were signed while Wen was in Myanmar's new capital Naypyidaw, where he also had a meeting with Senior General Than Shwe, chairman of the State Peace and Development Council, the military-led body that controls the country.
The two countries should strive to ensure that major energy and transport projects that China had underway in Myanmar were completed on time, said Wen, according to Xinhua.
ENERGY PROJECT
In October, China's state energy group CNPC started building a crude oil port in Myanmar, part of a pipeline project aimed at cutting out the long detour oil cargoes take through the congested and strategically vulnerable Malacca Strait.
Although short on specifics, the Chinese reports suggested the two countries were moving closer, despite China's jitters about elections planned for Myanmar this year, which observers say could ignite fresh tension in the borderlands.
The election, a date for which has not been set, has been widely dismissed by opponents as a move by the military to extend its five decade hold on power by creating a facade of civilian rule. They also fear it could also become an opportunity for the junta to press for control of border areas.
Myanmar's government wants ethnic minority groups to take part in the election and early this year told militias to disarm and join a government-run border patrol force or be wiped out, although it now appears to have backed down slightly.
Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Jiang Yu would not confirm whether Wen discussed the elections with his hosts. She repeated Beijing's call for a trouble-free vote.
"We hope that all sides in Myanmar can steadily advance democratic development through reconciliation and cooperation," Jiang told a regular news conference in Beijing.
The West imposed broad sanctions on Myanmar in 1988, after a military crackdown on pro-democracy protests. China stepped into the void, providing aid and weapons and ramping up trade.
Thu Jun 3, 2010 4:37pm IST
By Aung Hla Tun
YANGON (Reuters) - Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao reached broad agreement with Myanmar about maintaining stability in restless border regions during a visit on Thursday that he said marked a new stage in ties, media reported.
Wen said he and Myanmar Prime Minister Thein Sein "reached a broad understanding on protecting the peace and stability of the (Myanmar) border regions" and signed agreements that Wen said "signified another step forward in bilateral relations", China's official Xinhua news agency reported.
"We are willing to deepen our friendship with Myanmar and expand cooperation, always acting as a good neighbour, good friend and good partner," Wen told Myanmar's prime minister.
China is one of the few countries that keeps close ties with the Southeast Asian nation once called Burma, ruled by a military junta largely shunned by the West. But relations have been frayed by unrest along Myanmar's remote borderlands with China.
Many of the hilly, remote areas on Myanmar's side of the border are run by armed groups drawn from a patchwork of ethnic minorities resistant to direct rule by the military government.
Some are narco-states producing and selling drugs into China, and the Myanmar military over ran one of the weakest groups last year, sending about 37,000 refugees streaming into China.
The agreements signed in the two leaders' presence included ones on a natural gas pipeline, a hydro project, trade and finance, reported Xinhua. China also offered more aid, the news agency said, without giving details.
The deals were signed while Wen was in Myanmar's new capital Naypyidaw, where he also had a meeting with Senior General Than Shwe, chairman of the State Peace and Development Council, the military-led body that controls the country.
The two countries should strive to ensure that major energy and transport projects that China had underway in Myanmar were completed on time, said Wen, according to Xinhua.
ENERGY PROJECT
In October, China's state energy group CNPC started building a crude oil port in Myanmar, part of a pipeline project aimed at cutting out the long detour oil cargoes take through the congested and strategically vulnerable Malacca Strait.
Although short on specifics, the Chinese reports suggested the two countries were moving closer, despite China's jitters about elections planned for Myanmar this year, which observers say could ignite fresh tension in the borderlands.
The election, a date for which has not been set, has been widely dismissed by opponents as a move by the military to extend its five decade hold on power by creating a facade of civilian rule. They also fear it could also become an opportunity for the junta to press for control of border areas.
Myanmar's government wants ethnic minority groups to take part in the election and early this year told militias to disarm and join a government-run border patrol force or be wiped out, although it now appears to have backed down slightly.
Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Jiang Yu would not confirm whether Wen discussed the elections with his hosts. She repeated Beijing's call for a trouble-free vote.
"We hope that all sides in Myanmar can steadily advance democratic development through reconciliation and cooperation," Jiang told a regular news conference in Beijing.
The West imposed broad sanctions on Myanmar in 1988, after a military crackdown on pro-democracy protests. China stepped into the void, providing aid and weapons and ramping up trade.
*****************************************************
INTERVIEW - Better laws needed to protect women - Nobel laureates
Fri Jun 4, 2010 7:17pm IST
By Aaron Gray-Block
KAMPALA (Reuters) - National laws must be overhauled to make it easier for women to prove that they are the victims of gender-based crimes, especially at the International Criminal Court, two Nobel peace prize laureates said on Friday.
Iran's Shirin Ebadi and Kenya's Wangari Maathai, part of the Nobel Women's Initiative established to highlight the fight for women's justice, told Reuters that women in nations such as Sudan, Kenya or Burma are still waiting for justice.
"When the soldiers come, whether from the government or the rebels, often the women are the target and rape has become the weapon they use to humiliate the men," Maathai said.
Only the women who got a medical check-up to meet current standards of proof can prove they were raped in Kenya's post-election violence in 2007-08, Maathai said, urging states to ensure proper recording and documentation of rapes.
"But this is a case of war and this is a case of rape. We are dealing with a very fragile situation, so how does the ICC and even national governments, how do they humanise the law? How do we craft the evidence that does not punish the women?"
Ebadi said there are many obstacles for national courts to try culprits, many of whom hold positions of power, highlighting the need for an impartial and powerful international court.
Besides problems in her native country Iran, Ebadi also pointed to Burma where women who have been raped were detained on charges they insulted the soldiers, while Burmese women sent to China for prostitution were ignored by Burma's courts.
The Rome Statute which set up the ICC has been praised for providing the court with a highly advanced articulation of gender-based violence in international law, while also allowing the participation of victims in trials and reparations.
But women's rights groups criticised the ICC's first trial, against accused Congolese warlord Thomas Lubanga, for focusing only on child soldiers and not including sexual violence.
In contrast, the case against Congolese Jean Pierre Bemba is focused on sexual violence and a report from the Victims' Rights Working Group said the ICC's attention on gender crimes has helped raised awareness and reduce marginalisation of victims.
Fri Jun 4, 2010 7:17pm IST
By Aaron Gray-Block
KAMPALA (Reuters) - National laws must be overhauled to make it easier for women to prove that they are the victims of gender-based crimes, especially at the International Criminal Court, two Nobel peace prize laureates said on Friday.
Iran's Shirin Ebadi and Kenya's Wangari Maathai, part of the Nobel Women's Initiative established to highlight the fight for women's justice, told Reuters that women in nations such as Sudan, Kenya or Burma are still waiting for justice.
"When the soldiers come, whether from the government or the rebels, often the women are the target and rape has become the weapon they use to humiliate the men," Maathai said.
Only the women who got a medical check-up to meet current standards of proof can prove they were raped in Kenya's post-election violence in 2007-08, Maathai said, urging states to ensure proper recording and documentation of rapes.
"But this is a case of war and this is a case of rape. We are dealing with a very fragile situation, so how does the ICC and even national governments, how do they humanise the law? How do we craft the evidence that does not punish the women?"
Ebadi said there are many obstacles for national courts to try culprits, many of whom hold positions of power, highlighting the need for an impartial and powerful international court.
Besides problems in her native country Iran, Ebadi also pointed to Burma where women who have been raped were detained on charges they insulted the soldiers, while Burmese women sent to China for prostitution were ignored by Burma's courts.
The Rome Statute which set up the ICC has been praised for providing the court with a highly advanced articulation of gender-based violence in international law, while also allowing the participation of victims in trials and reparations.
But women's rights groups criticised the ICC's first trial, against accused Congolese warlord Thomas Lubanga, for focusing only on child soldiers and not including sexual violence.
In contrast, the case against Congolese Jean Pierre Bemba is focused on sexual violence and a report from the Victims' Rights Working Group said the ICC's attention on gender crimes has helped raised awareness and reduce marginalisation of victims.
*****************************************************
Aljazeera.net - Myanmar 'nuclear plans' exposed
UPDATED ON: Friday, June 04, 2010
An investigation by an anti-government Myanmar broadcaster has found evidence that it says shows the country's military regime has begun a programme to develop nuclear weapons.
Journalists from the Norway-based Democratic Voice of Burma (DVB) have been gathering information about secret military projects in Myanmar for years.
But they say recent revelations from a former army officer show that the military government is pushing ahead with ambitions to become a nuclear power.
The allegations are contained in a special documentary produced by the DVB being aired by Al Jazeera.
On Thursday evening, shortly before the film was due to be broadcast, US Senator Jim Webb announced he was postponing his scheduled trip to Myanmar in response to allegations in the documentary.
"Until there is further clarification on these matters, I believe it would be unwise and potentially counterproductive for me to visit Burma," Webb, who is the Democratic chairman of the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee Subcommittee on East Asia and Pacific Affairs, told reporters in Bangkok.
Burma is the former name of Myanmar.
Webb had been due to fly to Myanmar late on Thursday for talks with detained pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi and senior officials in the country's reclusive military junta.
Defector speaks out
The producers of the DVB documentary say evidence of Myanmar's nuclear programme has come from top-secret material smuggled out of the country over several years,
including hundreds of files and other evidence provided by Sai Thein Win, a former major in Myanmar's army.
Sai Thein Win says he was deputy commander of a highly classified military factory that was the headquarters of the army's nuclear battalion.
But he says he decided to defect and bring top-secret evidence of the project with him.
"They really want a bomb, that is their main objective," he says in the film.
"They want to have the rockets and nuclear warheads."
His smuggled files were shown to Robert Kelley, the former director of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), who told the producers they showed clear indications of a programme to build atomic weapons.
"It appears it is a nuclear weapons program because there is no conceivable use for this for nuclear power or anything like that," he says.
Suspicions
However other experts like John Isaacs, executive director of the Washington-based Centre for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation, are not ready to make a definitive conclusion yet.
"I would say there are a lot of suspicions," Adams told the DVB. "But it's hard to say there's actual proof of what Myanmar's trying to do."
Sai Thein Win says he decided to defect after seeing a previous report by the DVB about the Myanmar regime's extensive network of secret underground bunkers and tunnels.
The broadcaster gathered thousands of photos and more defector testimony, claiming some of the tunnels are used as command posts, while others – some are large as two football fields – are used for storing secret weapons and equipment to protect them from aerial bombardment.
The tunnels have allegedly been built with the help of expertise from North Korea – a link that has drawn growing international attention.
'Bunker mentality'
Aung Zaw, an exiled Myanmar journalist and editor of the Thailand-based magazine Irrawaddy, told Al Jazeera there was substantial evidence Myanmar had been buying conventional weapons and missiles from North Korea, but the secret nature of the ruling regime makes it very difficult to get at the truth.
"They live in a bunker mentality," he said of the ruling generals.
"They live in fear of an invasion by the West - that's why they relocated the capital to central Burma."
A recent UN report on the sanctions against North Korea banning nuclear and ballistic missile activities, found what it called "suspicious activity in Myanmar" and experts say that might build up the case for an IAEA inspection.
"In many ways North Korea is a parallel to Burma," the Centre for Arms Control's John Isaacs says in the DVB film.
"It's a poor country with a weak economy and starvation at home, and yet they manage to gather resources to build a nuclear weapon."
The DVB investigation agrees, but also points out it was not that long ago when few people imagined that countries like North Korea, Iran and Pakistan would also become nuclear powers.
UPDATED ON: Friday, June 04, 2010
An investigation by an anti-government Myanmar broadcaster has found evidence that it says shows the country's military regime has begun a programme to develop nuclear weapons.
Journalists from the Norway-based Democratic Voice of Burma (DVB) have been gathering information about secret military projects in Myanmar for years.
But they say recent revelations from a former army officer show that the military government is pushing ahead with ambitions to become a nuclear power.
The allegations are contained in a special documentary produced by the DVB being aired by Al Jazeera.
On Thursday evening, shortly before the film was due to be broadcast, US Senator Jim Webb announced he was postponing his scheduled trip to Myanmar in response to allegations in the documentary.
"Until there is further clarification on these matters, I believe it would be unwise and potentially counterproductive for me to visit Burma," Webb, who is the Democratic chairman of the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee Subcommittee on East Asia and Pacific Affairs, told reporters in Bangkok.
Burma is the former name of Myanmar.
Webb had been due to fly to Myanmar late on Thursday for talks with detained pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi and senior officials in the country's reclusive military junta.
Defector speaks out
The producers of the DVB documentary say evidence of Myanmar's nuclear programme has come from top-secret material smuggled out of the country over several years,
including hundreds of files and other evidence provided by Sai Thein Win, a former major in Myanmar's army.
Sai Thein Win says he was deputy commander of a highly classified military factory that was the headquarters of the army's nuclear battalion.
But he says he decided to defect and bring top-secret evidence of the project with him.
"They really want a bomb, that is their main objective," he says in the film.
"They want to have the rockets and nuclear warheads."
His smuggled files were shown to Robert Kelley, the former director of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), who told the producers they showed clear indications of a programme to build atomic weapons.
"It appears it is a nuclear weapons program because there is no conceivable use for this for nuclear power or anything like that," he says.
Suspicions
However other experts like John Isaacs, executive director of the Washington-based Centre for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation, are not ready to make a definitive conclusion yet.
"I would say there are a lot of suspicions," Adams told the DVB. "But it's hard to say there's actual proof of what Myanmar's trying to do."
Sai Thein Win says he decided to defect after seeing a previous report by the DVB about the Myanmar regime's extensive network of secret underground bunkers and tunnels.
The broadcaster gathered thousands of photos and more defector testimony, claiming some of the tunnels are used as command posts, while others – some are large as two football fields – are used for storing secret weapons and equipment to protect them from aerial bombardment.
The tunnels have allegedly been built with the help of expertise from North Korea – a link that has drawn growing international attention.
'Bunker mentality'
Aung Zaw, an exiled Myanmar journalist and editor of the Thailand-based magazine Irrawaddy, told Al Jazeera there was substantial evidence Myanmar had been buying conventional weapons and missiles from North Korea, but the secret nature of the ruling regime makes it very difficult to get at the truth.
"They live in a bunker mentality," he said of the ruling generals.
"They live in fear of an invasion by the West - that's why they relocated the capital to central Burma."
A recent UN report on the sanctions against North Korea banning nuclear and ballistic missile activities, found what it called "suspicious activity in Myanmar" and experts say that might build up the case for an IAEA inspection.
"In many ways North Korea is a parallel to Burma," the Centre for Arms Control's John Isaacs says in the DVB film.
"It's a poor country with a weak economy and starvation at home, and yet they manage to gather resources to build a nuclear weapon."
The DVB investigation agrees, but also points out it was not that long ago when few people imagined that countries like North Korea, Iran and Pakistan would also become nuclear powers.
*****************************************************
Alibaba News Channel
CNPC begins official construction of China-Myanmar pipelines
Published: 03 Jun 2010 18:49:50 PST
BEIJING, June 4 - State-owned oil giant CNPC has launched official construction of the China-Myanmar oil and gas pipelines, a company newspaper reported on Friday, as China diversifies its energy imports to ease a few over-laden routes.
As premiers of both countries looked on, CNPC General Manager Jiang Jiemin and head of Myanmar's state-owned Myanma Oil and Gas Enterprise (MOGE) signed several agreements on Thursday, specifying CNPC's Southeast Asia Pipeline Co as the controlling shareholder of the pipeline projects and head of pipeline design, construction, operation, expansion and maintenance, the China Petroleum Daily said.
The oil pipeline spans 771 kilometres and gas pipe runs 793 kilometres in Myanmar.
CNPC started building a crude oil port in November last year on Maday Island, Kyaukphyu Township in Myanmar's Rakhine state.
The port would serve as the starting point of the oil pipeline with 240,000 barrels per day of capacity in its first phase, which could help cut China's oil imports' long detour through the congested Malacca Strait.
The gas pipeline, with capacity of 12 billion cubic metres per year, would be fed by gas production in Myanmar.
Main construction on the oil and gas pipelines are expected to be completed by the end of next year, a CNPC pipeline official said last Friday.
Published: 03 Jun 2010 18:49:50 PST
BEIJING, June 4 - State-owned oil giant CNPC has launched official construction of the China-Myanmar oil and gas pipelines, a company newspaper reported on Friday, as China diversifies its energy imports to ease a few over-laden routes.
As premiers of both countries looked on, CNPC General Manager Jiang Jiemin and head of Myanmar's state-owned Myanma Oil and Gas Enterprise (MOGE) signed several agreements on Thursday, specifying CNPC's Southeast Asia Pipeline Co as the controlling shareholder of the pipeline projects and head of pipeline design, construction, operation, expansion and maintenance, the China Petroleum Daily said.
The oil pipeline spans 771 kilometres and gas pipe runs 793 kilometres in Myanmar.
CNPC started building a crude oil port in November last year on Maday Island, Kyaukphyu Township in Myanmar's Rakhine state.
The port would serve as the starting point of the oil pipeline with 240,000 barrels per day of capacity in its first phase, which could help cut China's oil imports' long detour through the congested Malacca Strait.
The gas pipeline, with capacity of 12 billion cubic metres per year, would be fed by gas production in Myanmar.
Main construction on the oil and gas pipelines are expected to be completed by the end of next year, a CNPC pipeline official said last Friday.
*****************************************************
Jun 5, 2010
Asia Times Online - Myanmar's nuclear bombshell
By Bertil Lintner
BANGKOK - Myanmar's ruling generals have started a secret program to develop nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles to deliver them in a high-stakes bid to deter perceived hostile foreign powers, according to an investigative report by the Democratic Voice of Burma that will be aired later on Friday by television news network al-Jazeera.
Asia Times Online contributor Bertil Lintner was involved in reviewing materials during extensive authentication processes conducted by international arms experts and others during the report's five-year production. In the strategic footsteps of North Korea, Myanmar's leaders are also building a complex network of tunnels, bunkers and other underground installations where they and their military hardware would be hidden against any external aerial attack, including presumably from the United States.
Based on testimonies and photographs supplied by high-ranking military defectors, the documentary will show for the first time how Myanmar has developed the capacity and is now using laser isotope separation, a technique for developing nuclear weapons. It will also show how machinery and equipment has been acquired to develop ballistic missiles.
That Myanmar is now trying to develop nuclear weapons and has become engaged in a military partnership with North Korea will dramatically change the region's security dynamic. Myanmar is a member of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), a 10-nation grouping whose members jointly signed the 1995 Southeast Asian Nuclear-Weapon-Free Zone Treaty, also known as the Bangkok Treaty.
The nuclear bid will also put the already diplomatically isolated country on a collision course with the US. US Senator Jim Webb, who has earlier led a diplomatic drive to ''engage'' the junta, abruptly canceled his scheduled June 4 trip to Myanmar when he learned about the upcoming documentary. The explosive revelations about Myanmar's nuclear initiative are expected to freeze Washington's recent warming towards the generals.
It is possible that the junta's grandiose schemes could amount to little more than a monumental waste of state resources. According to one international arms expert familiar with the materials on Myanmar's program, the laser isotope separation method now being employed by Myanmar's insufficiently trained scientists ''is probably one of the worst that is yet to be invented. The major countries of the world have spent billions of dollars trying to make the process work without success.''
There is thus a risk that the generals will further undermine the country's already wobbly economic fundamentals on ill-conceived weapons projects, ones that may yield little more than lots of radioactive holes in the ground and some crude Scud-type missiles.
Western military experts assert that any sophisticated bunker-buster bomb could easily penetrate the newly built network of tunnels and other underground facilities, constructed near the new capital of Naypyidaw. In light of the country's lack of technical know-how, Myanmar's desired nuclear bomb may also turn out to be a huge white elephant. It is not even certain that its homegrown missiles will fly. At least that is the conclusion of weapons' experts who have closely examined the materials that will be presented in al-Jazeera's investigative report.
The program was produced over five-years by the Democratic Voice of Burma, or DVB, a Norway-based radio and TV station run by Myanmar exiles. They have made their case based on leaked photographs, documents and testimonies from key military defectors. The documentary was directed by London-based Australian journalist Evan Williams.
Nuclear turncoat
The report's main source, Sai Thein Win, is a former Myanmar army major who recently defected to the West, bringing with him a trove of information never seen before outside of the country. His documentation has been scrutinized by, among others, Robert Kelley, a former US weapons scientist at the Los Alamos facility where work is conducted towards the design of nuclear weapons.
From 1992 to 1993 and 2001 to 2005, Kelley also served as one of the directors of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). "Sai Thein Win reminds us to some degree of Mordecai Vanunu, an Israeli technician at the Dimona nuclear site in the Negev desert ... Sai is providing similar information," said Kelley.
Vanunu blew the whistle on Israel's nuclear program, and, according to Kelley, Sai Thein Win has "provided photographs of items that would appear to be very useful in a nuclear program as they are specific to nuclear issues. They could be seen as for other things, but they look like they were designed for a nuclear program."
Geoff Forden, another international arms expert, says Myanmar appears to be "pursuing at least two different paths towards acquiring a missile production capability. One is a more or less indigenous path. The less indigenous comes from the fact that they have sent a number of Myanmar military officers to Moscow for training in engineering related to missile design and production."
Sai Thein Win was among the Myanmar army officers sent to Russia and he has produced photographs of himself taken during his training there. He also has pictures of a top secret nuclear facility located 11 kilometers from Thabeikkyin, a small town near the Irrawaddy River in northern Myanmar.
He claims this is the headquarters of the army's nuclear battalion and that it is there the regime is trying to build a nuclear reactor and enrich uranium for weapons. Missile development, he says, is carried out at another facility near Myaing, southwest of Mandalay, in central Myanmar.
Machinery for the Myaing plant has been supplied by two German firms, which also sent engineers to install the equipment. The Germans, Sai Thein Win says, were told that "the factories were educational institutions ... those poor German engineers don't know, didn't know that we were aiming to use those machines in producing rocket parts or some parts for military use."
How useful those machines will be for missile development is questionable. Despite their training in Russia, the Myanmar engineers handling them have little or no knowledge of producing sophisticated weapons, according to experts who say the generals' apparent dream of having a nuclear reactor may also be just that: a pipedream.
Another high-ranking Myanmar military official also provided DVB's researchers with classified information related to the country's nuclear and missile program. He, however, fell out of view while in Singapore some time last year and his current whereabouts is now unknown.
Myanmar was one of the first countries in the region to launch a nuclear research program. In 1956, the country's then-democratic government set up the Union of Burma Atomic Energy Center in the former capital Yangon. Unrelated to the country's defense industries, it came to a halt when the military seized power in 1962. The new military power-holders, led by General Ne Win, did not trust the old technocrats and saw little use in having a nuclear program designed for peaceful purposes.
In 2001, Myanmar's present ruling junta aimed to revitalize the country's nuclear ambitions. An agreement was signed with Russia 's Atomic Energy Ministry, which announced plans to build a 10-megawatt nuclear research reactor in central Myanmar. That same year, Myanmar established a Department of Atomic Energy, believed to be the brainchild of the Minister for Science and Technology, U Thaung, a graduate of the Defense Services Academy and former ambassador to the US. At the time, US-trained nuclear scientist Thein Po Saw was identified as a leading advocate for nuclear technology in Myanmar.
Reports since then have been murky, including speculation that the deal was shelved due to Myanmar's lack of finances. The Russian reactor was never delivered, but in May 2007 Russia 's atomic energy agency, Rosatom, again announced it would build Myanmar 's nuclear-research reactor. Under the initial 2001 agreement, Myanmar nationals, most military personnel, were sent to Russia for training. Nearly 10 years later, Russia has yet to deliver the reactor because Myanmar "refused to allow inspection by the IAEA", according to DVB.
North Korean ally
Myanmar thus appears to have embarked on its own indigenous program to build a nuclear research reactor. Unconfirmed reports circulated on the Internet claim that North Korea is assisting the Myanmar authorities in the endeavor. Diplomatic relations between North Korea and Myanmar, which were severed in 1983 when North Korean agents detonated a bomb in Yangon, were officially restored in April 2007.
Only days later, a North Korean freighter, the Kang Nam I, docked at Thilawa port near the old capital. Heavy crates were unloaded under strict secrecy and tight security. A journalist working for a Japanese news agency was detained and interrogated for attempting to photograph the unloading.
Last year, the Kang Nam I was back in the news when, destined for Myanmar, it was turned back by US naval warships. At the time, it was thought to be carrying material banned under UN Security Council resolutions aimed at preventing North Korea from exporting material related to the production and development of weapons of mass destruction (WMD).
North Korea's role in Myanmar 's nascent nuclear program is still a matter of conjecture. But in May this year, a seven-member UN panel monitoring implementation of sanctions against North Korea said its research indicated that Pyongyang is involved in banned nuclear and ballistic activities in Iran, Syria and Myanmar.
The experts in the documentary said they were looking into "suspicious activity in Myanmar", including the presence of Namchongang Trading, one of the North Korean companies sanctioned by the UN. North Korean tunneling experts are also known to have provided crucial assistance to the construction of Myanmar's underground facilities.
According to an unnamed Myanmar army engineer, who was also interviewed for the DVB documentary, "a batch of eight North Koreans came each time and [were] sent back, [then] another eight came and were sent back. At the Defense Industry factories, there are at least eight to 16 of them ... they act as technical advisers."
In November 2008, Gen Shwe Mann, the third-highest ranking official in Myanmar's military hierarchy, paid a secret visit to Pyongyang. Traveling with an entourage of military officers, he visited a radar base and a factory making Scud missiles, and signed a memorandum of understanding with the North Koreans to enhance military cooperation between the two countries.
A photo file and other details of the visit were leaked to Myanmar exiles and were soon available on the Internet, prompting the authorities to carry out a purge within its own ranks. On January 7 this year, one Foreign Ministry official and a retired military officer were sentenced to death for leaking the material.
Military insecurity
Aung Lin Htut, a former intelligence officer attached to the Myanmar Embassy in Washington until he defected in 2004, claims that soon after General Than Shwe came to power in 1992 he "thought that if we followed the North Korean example we would not need to take into account America or even need to care about China. In other words, when they have nuclear energy and weapons other countries ... won't dare touch Myanmar."
The tunnels and bunkers - some of which are large enough to accommodate hundreds of soldiers - should be seen in the same light, Aung Lin Htut has argued. "It is for their own safety that the government has invested heavily into those tunnel projects," he said.
The generals may fear not only an outside attack, which is highly unlikely according to security experts, but also another popular uprising. In 1988, millions of people took to the streets to demand an end to military dictatorship. In 2007, tens of thousands of Buddhist monks led marches for national reconciliation and a dialogue between the military government and the pro-democracy movement.
On both occasions, the generals responded with military force and brutally suppressed the popular movements. But the generals were shaken and apparently saw the need to move themselves and vital military facilities underground and away from populated areas, as also seen in the junta's bizarre and sudden move to the new capital Naypyidaw in November 2005.
For other reasons, North Korea reacted similarly after the war on the Korean Peninsula. North Korea is believed to have one of the world's most extensive complexes of tunnels, storage facilities - and even weapons' factories - all hidden from the prying eyes of real and imagined enemies.
That is likely why Myanmar's generals see Pyongyang as a role model and why relations between the two countries have warmed since the 1990s - hardly by coincidence at the same time the US has become one of Myanmar's fiercest critics. In 2005, then-secretary of state Condoleezza Rice branded Myanmar, along with Belarus, Cuba, North Korea, Iran and Zimbabwe as "outposts of tyranny", and the US tightened financial sanctions against the regime and its supporters.
The present US administration of President Barack Obama adopted a more conciliatory approach, sending emissaries to Myanmar to "engage" the generals and nudge them towards democracy. But sources close to the decision-making process in Washington also believe that concern over Myanmar's WMD programs - and increasingly close ties with North Korea - should be equally important considerations in any new US policy towards Myanmar.
One of the negotiators recently sent to Myanmar, US Assistant Secretary of State for East Asia Kurt Campbell, is interviewed in the DVB documentary. When asked about Myanmar's new security-related polices and initiatives, he replies rather cryptically:
Some of it is sensitive so really can't be discussed in great detail, but I will say we have seen enough to cause us some anxiety about certain kinds of military and other kinds of relationships between North Korea and Burma [Myanmar]. We have been very clear with the authorities about what our red lines are ... we always worry about nuclear proliferation and there are signs that there has been some flirtation around these matters.
According to internal documents presented by the DVB, the total cost of Myanmar's tunneling projects and WMD programs is astronomical, running into billions of US dollars. This appears to be one reason why several Myanmar military officers have defected to the West - and brought with them the evidence that will be seen by global audiences on Friday.
Bertil Lintner is a former correspondent with the Far Eastern Economic Review and the author of Great Leader, Dear Leader: Demystifying North Korea Under the Kim Clan. He is currently a writer with Asia Pacific Media Services.
Asia Times Online - Myanmar's nuclear bombshell
By Bertil Lintner
BANGKOK - Myanmar's ruling generals have started a secret program to develop nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles to deliver them in a high-stakes bid to deter perceived hostile foreign powers, according to an investigative report by the Democratic Voice of Burma that will be aired later on Friday by television news network al-Jazeera.
Asia Times Online contributor Bertil Lintner was involved in reviewing materials during extensive authentication processes conducted by international arms experts and others during the report's five-year production. In the strategic footsteps of North Korea, Myanmar's leaders are also building a complex network of tunnels, bunkers and other underground installations where they and their military hardware would be hidden against any external aerial attack, including presumably from the United States.
Based on testimonies and photographs supplied by high-ranking military defectors, the documentary will show for the first time how Myanmar has developed the capacity and is now using laser isotope separation, a technique for developing nuclear weapons. It will also show how machinery and equipment has been acquired to develop ballistic missiles.
That Myanmar is now trying to develop nuclear weapons and has become engaged in a military partnership with North Korea will dramatically change the region's security dynamic. Myanmar is a member of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), a 10-nation grouping whose members jointly signed the 1995 Southeast Asian Nuclear-Weapon-Free Zone Treaty, also known as the Bangkok Treaty.
The nuclear bid will also put the already diplomatically isolated country on a collision course with the US. US Senator Jim Webb, who has earlier led a diplomatic drive to ''engage'' the junta, abruptly canceled his scheduled June 4 trip to Myanmar when he learned about the upcoming documentary. The explosive revelations about Myanmar's nuclear initiative are expected to freeze Washington's recent warming towards the generals.
It is possible that the junta's grandiose schemes could amount to little more than a monumental waste of state resources. According to one international arms expert familiar with the materials on Myanmar's program, the laser isotope separation method now being employed by Myanmar's insufficiently trained scientists ''is probably one of the worst that is yet to be invented. The major countries of the world have spent billions of dollars trying to make the process work without success.''
There is thus a risk that the generals will further undermine the country's already wobbly economic fundamentals on ill-conceived weapons projects, ones that may yield little more than lots of radioactive holes in the ground and some crude Scud-type missiles.
Western military experts assert that any sophisticated bunker-buster bomb could easily penetrate the newly built network of tunnels and other underground facilities, constructed near the new capital of Naypyidaw. In light of the country's lack of technical know-how, Myanmar's desired nuclear bomb may also turn out to be a huge white elephant. It is not even certain that its homegrown missiles will fly. At least that is the conclusion of weapons' experts who have closely examined the materials that will be presented in al-Jazeera's investigative report.
The program was produced over five-years by the Democratic Voice of Burma, or DVB, a Norway-based radio and TV station run by Myanmar exiles. They have made their case based on leaked photographs, documents and testimonies from key military defectors. The documentary was directed by London-based Australian journalist Evan Williams.
Nuclear turncoat
The report's main source, Sai Thein Win, is a former Myanmar army major who recently defected to the West, bringing with him a trove of information never seen before outside of the country. His documentation has been scrutinized by, among others, Robert Kelley, a former US weapons scientist at the Los Alamos facility where work is conducted towards the design of nuclear weapons.
From 1992 to 1993 and 2001 to 2005, Kelley also served as one of the directors of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). "Sai Thein Win reminds us to some degree of Mordecai Vanunu, an Israeli technician at the Dimona nuclear site in the Negev desert ... Sai is providing similar information," said Kelley.
Vanunu blew the whistle on Israel's nuclear program, and, according to Kelley, Sai Thein Win has "provided photographs of items that would appear to be very useful in a nuclear program as they are specific to nuclear issues. They could be seen as for other things, but they look like they were designed for a nuclear program."
Geoff Forden, another international arms expert, says Myanmar appears to be "pursuing at least two different paths towards acquiring a missile production capability. One is a more or less indigenous path. The less indigenous comes from the fact that they have sent a number of Myanmar military officers to Moscow for training in engineering related to missile design and production."
Sai Thein Win was among the Myanmar army officers sent to Russia and he has produced photographs of himself taken during his training there. He also has pictures of a top secret nuclear facility located 11 kilometers from Thabeikkyin, a small town near the Irrawaddy River in northern Myanmar.
He claims this is the headquarters of the army's nuclear battalion and that it is there the regime is trying to build a nuclear reactor and enrich uranium for weapons. Missile development, he says, is carried out at another facility near Myaing, southwest of Mandalay, in central Myanmar.
Machinery for the Myaing plant has been supplied by two German firms, which also sent engineers to install the equipment. The Germans, Sai Thein Win says, were told that "the factories were educational institutions ... those poor German engineers don't know, didn't know that we were aiming to use those machines in producing rocket parts or some parts for military use."
How useful those machines will be for missile development is questionable. Despite their training in Russia, the Myanmar engineers handling them have little or no knowledge of producing sophisticated weapons, according to experts who say the generals' apparent dream of having a nuclear reactor may also be just that: a pipedream.
Another high-ranking Myanmar military official also provided DVB's researchers with classified information related to the country's nuclear and missile program. He, however, fell out of view while in Singapore some time last year and his current whereabouts is now unknown.
Myanmar was one of the first countries in the region to launch a nuclear research program. In 1956, the country's then-democratic government set up the Union of Burma Atomic Energy Center in the former capital Yangon. Unrelated to the country's defense industries, it came to a halt when the military seized power in 1962. The new military power-holders, led by General Ne Win, did not trust the old technocrats and saw little use in having a nuclear program designed for peaceful purposes.
In 2001, Myanmar's present ruling junta aimed to revitalize the country's nuclear ambitions. An agreement was signed with Russia 's Atomic Energy Ministry, which announced plans to build a 10-megawatt nuclear research reactor in central Myanmar. That same year, Myanmar established a Department of Atomic Energy, believed to be the brainchild of the Minister for Science and Technology, U Thaung, a graduate of the Defense Services Academy and former ambassador to the US. At the time, US-trained nuclear scientist Thein Po Saw was identified as a leading advocate for nuclear technology in Myanmar.
Reports since then have been murky, including speculation that the deal was shelved due to Myanmar's lack of finances. The Russian reactor was never delivered, but in May 2007 Russia 's atomic energy agency, Rosatom, again announced it would build Myanmar 's nuclear-research reactor. Under the initial 2001 agreement, Myanmar nationals, most military personnel, were sent to Russia for training. Nearly 10 years later, Russia has yet to deliver the reactor because Myanmar "refused to allow inspection by the IAEA", according to DVB.
North Korean ally
Myanmar thus appears to have embarked on its own indigenous program to build a nuclear research reactor. Unconfirmed reports circulated on the Internet claim that North Korea is assisting the Myanmar authorities in the endeavor. Diplomatic relations between North Korea and Myanmar, which were severed in 1983 when North Korean agents detonated a bomb in Yangon, were officially restored in April 2007.
Only days later, a North Korean freighter, the Kang Nam I, docked at Thilawa port near the old capital. Heavy crates were unloaded under strict secrecy and tight security. A journalist working for a Japanese news agency was detained and interrogated for attempting to photograph the unloading.
Last year, the Kang Nam I was back in the news when, destined for Myanmar, it was turned back by US naval warships. At the time, it was thought to be carrying material banned under UN Security Council resolutions aimed at preventing North Korea from exporting material related to the production and development of weapons of mass destruction (WMD).
North Korea's role in Myanmar 's nascent nuclear program is still a matter of conjecture. But in May this year, a seven-member UN panel monitoring implementation of sanctions against North Korea said its research indicated that Pyongyang is involved in banned nuclear and ballistic activities in Iran, Syria and Myanmar.
The experts in the documentary said they were looking into "suspicious activity in Myanmar", including the presence of Namchongang Trading, one of the North Korean companies sanctioned by the UN. North Korean tunneling experts are also known to have provided crucial assistance to the construction of Myanmar's underground facilities.
According to an unnamed Myanmar army engineer, who was also interviewed for the DVB documentary, "a batch of eight North Koreans came each time and [were] sent back, [then] another eight came and were sent back. At the Defense Industry factories, there are at least eight to 16 of them ... they act as technical advisers."
In November 2008, Gen Shwe Mann, the third-highest ranking official in Myanmar's military hierarchy, paid a secret visit to Pyongyang. Traveling with an entourage of military officers, he visited a radar base and a factory making Scud missiles, and signed a memorandum of understanding with the North Koreans to enhance military cooperation between the two countries.
A photo file and other details of the visit were leaked to Myanmar exiles and were soon available on the Internet, prompting the authorities to carry out a purge within its own ranks. On January 7 this year, one Foreign Ministry official and a retired military officer were sentenced to death for leaking the material.
Military insecurity
Aung Lin Htut, a former intelligence officer attached to the Myanmar Embassy in Washington until he defected in 2004, claims that soon after General Than Shwe came to power in 1992 he "thought that if we followed the North Korean example we would not need to take into account America or even need to care about China. In other words, when they have nuclear energy and weapons other countries ... won't dare touch Myanmar."
The tunnels and bunkers - some of which are large enough to accommodate hundreds of soldiers - should be seen in the same light, Aung Lin Htut has argued. "It is for their own safety that the government has invested heavily into those tunnel projects," he said.
The generals may fear not only an outside attack, which is highly unlikely according to security experts, but also another popular uprising. In 1988, millions of people took to the streets to demand an end to military dictatorship. In 2007, tens of thousands of Buddhist monks led marches for national reconciliation and a dialogue between the military government and the pro-democracy movement.
On both occasions, the generals responded with military force and brutally suppressed the popular movements. But the generals were shaken and apparently saw the need to move themselves and vital military facilities underground and away from populated areas, as also seen in the junta's bizarre and sudden move to the new capital Naypyidaw in November 2005.
For other reasons, North Korea reacted similarly after the war on the Korean Peninsula. North Korea is believed to have one of the world's most extensive complexes of tunnels, storage facilities - and even weapons' factories - all hidden from the prying eyes of real and imagined enemies.
That is likely why Myanmar's generals see Pyongyang as a role model and why relations between the two countries have warmed since the 1990s - hardly by coincidence at the same time the US has become one of Myanmar's fiercest critics. In 2005, then-secretary of state Condoleezza Rice branded Myanmar, along with Belarus, Cuba, North Korea, Iran and Zimbabwe as "outposts of tyranny", and the US tightened financial sanctions against the regime and its supporters.
The present US administration of President Barack Obama adopted a more conciliatory approach, sending emissaries to Myanmar to "engage" the generals and nudge them towards democracy. But sources close to the decision-making process in Washington also believe that concern over Myanmar's WMD programs - and increasingly close ties with North Korea - should be equally important considerations in any new US policy towards Myanmar.
One of the negotiators recently sent to Myanmar, US Assistant Secretary of State for East Asia Kurt Campbell, is interviewed in the DVB documentary. When asked about Myanmar's new security-related polices and initiatives, he replies rather cryptically:
Some of it is sensitive so really can't be discussed in great detail, but I will say we have seen enough to cause us some anxiety about certain kinds of military and other kinds of relationships between North Korea and Burma [Myanmar]. We have been very clear with the authorities about what our red lines are ... we always worry about nuclear proliferation and there are signs that there has been some flirtation around these matters.
According to internal documents presented by the DVB, the total cost of Myanmar's tunneling projects and WMD programs is astronomical, running into billions of US dollars. This appears to be one reason why several Myanmar military officers have defected to the West - and brought with them the evidence that will be seen by global audiences on Friday.
Bertil Lintner is a former correspondent with the Far Eastern Economic Review and the author of Great Leader, Dear Leader: Demystifying North Korea Under the Kim Clan. He is currently a writer with Asia Pacific Media Services.
*****************************************************
The Irrawaddy - Burma's Military Budget to Increase Significantly
Friday, June 4, 2010
At the four-monthly meeting of Burma's top generals held in Naypyidaw during the last week of May, the junta significantly increased its military budget from last year, according to sources close to the Burmese military.
A military source told The Irrawaddy on Thursday that although the amount budgeted to the military is unavailable, it is known to be much larger than last year's military budget.
“The money allocated to the military was budgeted under the heading 'Defense Budget', but there was no specific line items for separate expenses,” he said.
The military source added, however, that it is generally believed that large military equipment purchases will be made within the next six months.
In 2009, Burma signed a contract with Russia for the purchase of 20 MiG-29 jet fighters at a cost of nearly US $570 million.
Analysts believe that many of Burma's future military purchases may come from North Korea.
According to a report by UN experts obtained by The Associated Press last month, North Korea is exporting nuclear and ballistic missile technology and using multiple intermediaries, shell companies and overseas criminal networks to circumvent UN sanctions.
The UN's seven-member panel monitoring the implementation of sanctions against North Korea said its research indicates that Pyongyang is involved in banned nuclear and ballistic activities in Iran, Syria and Burma.
In November 2008, Gen Thura Shwe Mann, the regime’s No 3 ranking general, made a secret visit to North Korea and signed a memorandum of understanding, officially formalizing military cooperation between Burma and North Korea with his North Korean counterpart, Gen Kim Kyok-sik.
During his trip to Pyongyang, Shwe Mann also visited sites of secret tunnel complexes built into the sides of mountains to store and shield jet aircraft, missiles, tanks and nuclear and chemical weapons.
In addition, according to Burmese Maj Sai Thein Win, a former deputy commander of a top-secret military factory who defected and brought with him top secret documents and photographs about Burma's nuclear projects, secret underground bunkers and tunnels have been built at many locations in Burma.
Sai Thein Win, who was trained in Burma as a defense engineer and later in Russia as a missile expert, said that about 10,000 Burmese officials have been sent to Russia thus far to study military technology, including nuclear technology.
Sai Thein Win also said in a report that Burma is trying to build medium-range missiles such as SCUDs under a memorandum of understanding with North Korea. “Burma wants to have rockets and nuclear warheads. Burma wants to be a nuclear power,” Sai Thein Win said.
One reason the regime is able to increase its military budget and import expensive military equipment and technology may be its expected increase in energy revenues.
A study by the Washington-based United States Institute of Peace said that Burma's export earnings from the country's growing energy sector will double in the next five years, due mainly to oil and gas transit pipelines now being built from Burma to China. The Institute said the calculation is based on energy exports—mostly gas—accounting for at least 45 percent of the $6.6 billion earnings declared by Burmese interests in 2008.
Burma's military regime is infamous for spending a large percentage of its national budget on the military, rather than on education, health and other public services. According to Burma military experts, 40 to 60 percent of the national budget is allocated to the military.
In contrast, 0.4 percent of the national budget is spent on healthcare, while 0.5 percent is spent for education, according to a report released in 2007 by the International Institute for Strategic Studies, a think-tank based in London.
In other news regarding the four-monthly meeting, according to military sources there was no major military reshuffle in Naypyidaw.
Friday, June 4, 2010
At the four-monthly meeting of Burma's top generals held in Naypyidaw during the last week of May, the junta significantly increased its military budget from last year, according to sources close to the Burmese military.
A military source told The Irrawaddy on Thursday that although the amount budgeted to the military is unavailable, it is known to be much larger than last year's military budget.
“The money allocated to the military was budgeted under the heading 'Defense Budget', but there was no specific line items for separate expenses,” he said.
The military source added, however, that it is generally believed that large military equipment purchases will be made within the next six months.
In 2009, Burma signed a contract with Russia for the purchase of 20 MiG-29 jet fighters at a cost of nearly US $570 million.
Analysts believe that many of Burma's future military purchases may come from North Korea.
According to a report by UN experts obtained by The Associated Press last month, North Korea is exporting nuclear and ballistic missile technology and using multiple intermediaries, shell companies and overseas criminal networks to circumvent UN sanctions.
The UN's seven-member panel monitoring the implementation of sanctions against North Korea said its research indicates that Pyongyang is involved in banned nuclear and ballistic activities in Iran, Syria and Burma.
In November 2008, Gen Thura Shwe Mann, the regime’s No 3 ranking general, made a secret visit to North Korea and signed a memorandum of understanding, officially formalizing military cooperation between Burma and North Korea with his North Korean counterpart, Gen Kim Kyok-sik.
During his trip to Pyongyang, Shwe Mann also visited sites of secret tunnel complexes built into the sides of mountains to store and shield jet aircraft, missiles, tanks and nuclear and chemical weapons.
In addition, according to Burmese Maj Sai Thein Win, a former deputy commander of a top-secret military factory who defected and brought with him top secret documents and photographs about Burma's nuclear projects, secret underground bunkers and tunnels have been built at many locations in Burma.
Sai Thein Win, who was trained in Burma as a defense engineer and later in Russia as a missile expert, said that about 10,000 Burmese officials have been sent to Russia thus far to study military technology, including nuclear technology.
Sai Thein Win also said in a report that Burma is trying to build medium-range missiles such as SCUDs under a memorandum of understanding with North Korea. “Burma wants to have rockets and nuclear warheads. Burma wants to be a nuclear power,” Sai Thein Win said.
One reason the regime is able to increase its military budget and import expensive military equipment and technology may be its expected increase in energy revenues.
A study by the Washington-based United States Institute of Peace said that Burma's export earnings from the country's growing energy sector will double in the next five years, due mainly to oil and gas transit pipelines now being built from Burma to China. The Institute said the calculation is based on energy exports—mostly gas—accounting for at least 45 percent of the $6.6 billion earnings declared by Burmese interests in 2008.
Burma's military regime is infamous for spending a large percentage of its national budget on the military, rather than on education, health and other public services. According to Burma military experts, 40 to 60 percent of the national budget is allocated to the military.
In contrast, 0.4 percent of the national budget is spent on healthcare, while 0.5 percent is spent for education, according to a report released in 2007 by the International Institute for Strategic Studies, a think-tank based in London.
In other news regarding the four-monthly meeting, according to military sources there was no major military reshuffle in Naypyidaw.
*****************************************************
The Irrawaddy - Junta Constructing Tunnel in Magway
By YAN PAING - Friday, June 4, 2010
The Burmese military regime is constructing a tunnel in Rakhine Yoma, some 80 km west of Padan Township in Magway Division, local sources said.
The tunnel is 50 feet wide and 50 feet high, a worker from the project said, and is being supervised by North Korean technicians.
“Only cars which are authorized by the local army can enter the project area,” he said. “The tunnel is quite long and when they dynamite the tunnel, people have just 30 minutes to get outside.”
Another worker said that the new tunnel is connected to several other tunnels that are burrowed into the mountainside.
Workers such as carpenters and welders work in day and night shifts, and earn 900 kyat (US $0.90) per shift at the site, the worker said.
On Friday, fresh evidence of the regime constructing a secret network of hidden bunkers and tunnels across the country surfaced. According to an investigative film by an exiled Burmese broadcaster, the Democratic Voice of Burma (DVB), which was aired by Al Jazeera on Friday, some tunnels are marked as substations for fiber optic cables and are part of a plan to provide the military with a secure nationwide communications network.
“They are constructing a tunnel ... a huge tunnel. Many tunnels all over the country,” said Sai Thein Win—a former defense engineer and missile expert who recently defected from the army—in the film.
The documentary also revealed bunkers alleged to be used as secret military storage facilities and command centers in case of aerial attacks.
When Ne Win’s socialist government was in power in the 1980s and 90s, a series of defense and military equipment factories were built between the Irrawaddy River and
Rakhine Yoma, and in Htone Bo, Nyaung Chay Htauk and Ma Lon. The factories are connected with the Pathein- Monywa highway. Padan is also located near the Pathein- Monywa highway with easy access to the strategic Min Bu– Amm highway.
No transparent plans or records exist that describe the tunnel project, nor whether it is for military or economic purposes.
Speaking to The Irrawaddy on Friday, a source from Naypyidaw’s military community said, “There are a lot of secret military projects in Minn Done, Padan, Pwint Phyu, Say Tote Taya, Salin, Pakkoku, Laung Shay, Saw and on the western side of Seik Phyu Township.”
He continued: “When the current telecommunications minister, Maj-Gen Thein Zaw, was chairman of Magway Division, he planned to extract uranium with Col Zaw Minn, the commander of 88 Command in Saku.”
He said the military regime also has plans to construct munitions factories in Bago Yoma, Naypyidaw, Natt Mauk, Aung Lan and Pauk Khaung.
Sai Thein Win told the DVB that he has shown the secret files from the project to the International Atomic Energy Agency.
In November 2008, a Burmese military delegation led by Gen Shwe Mann flew secretly to North Korea and met the army-in-chief, Gen Kim Kyok-sik. They agreed terms of cooperation on several military initiatives, including radar and jamming units, air defense systems, and a computer-controlled command center. The delegation also visited North Korean SCUD missile factories which are located in the tunnels.
The two countries signed an agreement that North Korea will help in the construction of military facilities for missiles, aircraft and war ships.
Further evidence of cooperation between the two countries surfaced in June 2009 when a ship from North Korea en route to Burma was suspected of carried weapons.
International media agencies broadcast footage and photos of the Burmese regime's network of tunnels and claimed they were part of an underground nuclear bunker.
By YAN PAING - Friday, June 4, 2010
The Burmese military regime is constructing a tunnel in Rakhine Yoma, some 80 km west of Padan Township in Magway Division, local sources said.
The tunnel is 50 feet wide and 50 feet high, a worker from the project said, and is being supervised by North Korean technicians.
“Only cars which are authorized by the local army can enter the project area,” he said. “The tunnel is quite long and when they dynamite the tunnel, people have just 30 minutes to get outside.”
Another worker said that the new tunnel is connected to several other tunnels that are burrowed into the mountainside.
Workers such as carpenters and welders work in day and night shifts, and earn 900 kyat (US $0.90) per shift at the site, the worker said.
On Friday, fresh evidence of the regime constructing a secret network of hidden bunkers and tunnels across the country surfaced. According to an investigative film by an exiled Burmese broadcaster, the Democratic Voice of Burma (DVB), which was aired by Al Jazeera on Friday, some tunnels are marked as substations for fiber optic cables and are part of a plan to provide the military with a secure nationwide communications network.
“They are constructing a tunnel ... a huge tunnel. Many tunnels all over the country,” said Sai Thein Win—a former defense engineer and missile expert who recently defected from the army—in the film.
The documentary also revealed bunkers alleged to be used as secret military storage facilities and command centers in case of aerial attacks.
When Ne Win’s socialist government was in power in the 1980s and 90s, a series of defense and military equipment factories were built between the Irrawaddy River and
Rakhine Yoma, and in Htone Bo, Nyaung Chay Htauk and Ma Lon. The factories are connected with the Pathein- Monywa highway. Padan is also located near the Pathein- Monywa highway with easy access to the strategic Min Bu– Amm highway.
No transparent plans or records exist that describe the tunnel project, nor whether it is for military or economic purposes.
Speaking to The Irrawaddy on Friday, a source from Naypyidaw’s military community said, “There are a lot of secret military projects in Minn Done, Padan, Pwint Phyu, Say Tote Taya, Salin, Pakkoku, Laung Shay, Saw and on the western side of Seik Phyu Township.”
He continued: “When the current telecommunications minister, Maj-Gen Thein Zaw, was chairman of Magway Division, he planned to extract uranium with Col Zaw Minn, the commander of 88 Command in Saku.”
He said the military regime also has plans to construct munitions factories in Bago Yoma, Naypyidaw, Natt Mauk, Aung Lan and Pauk Khaung.
Sai Thein Win told the DVB that he has shown the secret files from the project to the International Atomic Energy Agency.
In November 2008, a Burmese military delegation led by Gen Shwe Mann flew secretly to North Korea and met the army-in-chief, Gen Kim Kyok-sik. They agreed terms of cooperation on several military initiatives, including radar and jamming units, air defense systems, and a computer-controlled command center. The delegation also visited North Korean SCUD missile factories which are located in the tunnels.
The two countries signed an agreement that North Korea will help in the construction of military facilities for missiles, aircraft and war ships.
Further evidence of cooperation between the two countries surfaced in June 2009 when a ship from North Korea en route to Burma was suspected of carried weapons.
International media agencies broadcast footage and photos of the Burmese regime's network of tunnels and claimed they were part of an underground nuclear bunker.
*****************************************************
The Irrawaddy - National Library Goes in Regime's Latest Property Sale
By NAYEE LIN LATT - Friday, June 4, 2010
Burma's National Library and a TV studio complex are among five state-owned buildings sold to private investors, according to informed sources in Rangoon.
Apart from the National Library, the regime has shed itself of the MRTV 3 news and studio complex, the People's Department Store, the Yadanapon Theater and a six-story office building, said sources close to the regime's Privatization Commission.
The buildings were among more than 20 administered by the regime's Department of Human Settlement and Housing Department. The buildings that are still unsold belong to the Ministry of Industry No. 1, Ministry of Agriculture and Irrigation, Ministry of Health, Rangoon Division Department of Health, Ministry of Transport, Ministry of Energy and Ministry of Co-operatives.
A Privatization Commission official said that since late 2009 a total of 147 state-owned buildings, including factories and government ministry offices, had been sold off.
A Rangoon Municipal Committee engineer said the sale was aimed at offering “economic opportunities” not only to business investors but also to the “general public.”
One of the customers in the latest sell out, however, was the Shwe Taung Development Co., Ltd., which enjoys a close relationship with the regime. It paid 130 billion kyat (about US $13 million) for the MRTV 3 complex.
The National Library went for only about 100 million kyat ($100,000), while the Yadanapon Theater, which belonged to the Myanma Motion Picture Enterprise of the Ministry of Information, fetched more than 920 million kyat (nearly $1 million).
One businessman with close contacts to regime officials suggested that state-run property was being sold off to raise funds for the development of the government quarter in Naypyidaw and help finance the upcoming election.
A retired professor from Rangoon's University of Economics expressed sorrow at the sale of the National Library, saying it contradicted an official statement assuring support for Burmese literature.
By NAYEE LIN LATT - Friday, June 4, 2010
Burma's National Library and a TV studio complex are among five state-owned buildings sold to private investors, according to informed sources in Rangoon.
Apart from the National Library, the regime has shed itself of the MRTV 3 news and studio complex, the People's Department Store, the Yadanapon Theater and a six-story office building, said sources close to the regime's Privatization Commission.
The buildings were among more than 20 administered by the regime's Department of Human Settlement and Housing Department. The buildings that are still unsold belong to the Ministry of Industry No. 1, Ministry of Agriculture and Irrigation, Ministry of Health, Rangoon Division Department of Health, Ministry of Transport, Ministry of Energy and Ministry of Co-operatives.
A Privatization Commission official said that since late 2009 a total of 147 state-owned buildings, including factories and government ministry offices, had been sold off.
A Rangoon Municipal Committee engineer said the sale was aimed at offering “economic opportunities” not only to business investors but also to the “general public.”
One of the customers in the latest sell out, however, was the Shwe Taung Development Co., Ltd., which enjoys a close relationship with the regime. It paid 130 billion kyat (about US $13 million) for the MRTV 3 complex.
The National Library went for only about 100 million kyat ($100,000), while the Yadanapon Theater, which belonged to the Myanma Motion Picture Enterprise of the Ministry of Information, fetched more than 920 million kyat (nearly $1 million).
One businessman with close contacts to regime officials suggested that state-run property was being sold off to raise funds for the development of the government quarter in Naypyidaw and help finance the upcoming election.
A retired professor from Rangoon's University of Economics expressed sorrow at the sale of the National Library, saying it contradicted an official statement assuring support for Burmese literature.
*****************************************************
NLD predicts rise in US-Burma tensions
Friday, 04 June 2010 00:29 Phanida
Chiang Mai (Mizzima) – The cancellation of US senator Jim Webb’s visit to Burma may cause increased tension between the Washington and the Burmese military regime, Burmese opposition party, the National League for Democracy, foresees.
The prediction from the main opposition party came after the US Sentate Foreign Relations East Asian and Pacific affairs subcommittee chairman, Jim Webb, announced the postponement of his visit at short notice today.
“The tension will be heightened between US and the regime based on this matter”, NLD central executive committee member Win Tin said.
He added that the new engagement policy adopted by US President Barack Obama was failing.
Webb had planned to meet NLD vice-chairman Tin Oo along with seven party central executive panel members including, Win Tin and Nyan Win, at the residence of the US chargé d’ affaires Larry Dinger in Rangoon on Saturday afternoon.
In his statement today, he said that he was concerned over an alleged attempt by Burma to acquire nuclear weapons from North Korea and that he would not make a further visit to Burma until the ruling junta resolved this issue completely. The nuclear bid would represent a breach of UN Security Council resolutions.
The potential breach would fly in the face of recent comments by Science and Technology Minister U Thaung at a meeting between US assistant secretary of state for East Asia and Pacific Affairs Dr. Kurt Campbell and State Peace and Development Council (the military junta’s own label for itself) ministers in Naypyidaw last month. U Thaung told the visiting US minister that the junta would “fully” comply with the Security Council resolutions 1718 and 1874 but at the same time, it had a responsibility to safeguard the “sovereignty of State” when the US minister raised the nuclear issue.
After North Korean detonated its first nuclear device in a test on October 9, 2006, the United Nations Security Council imposed economic and financial sanctions against North Korea with Resolution 1718 on October 14.
After Pyongyang’s second test in May last year, the UN passed Resolution 1874 the following month, enabling UN member nations to check and inspect North Korean vessels and aircraft suspected of carrying nuclear weapons. The resolution also bans member countries any arms trading with North Korea.
Webb, who protested in principle against imposing sanctions on Burma, became the first top-level politician to meet Burmese junta chief Senior General Than Shwe on August 15 last year.
Washington suspects the Burmese junta of buying nuclear weapons from North Korea, NLD Liberated Area foreign affairs committee leader Nyo Ohn Myint said.
During 2008, a junta military delegation led by General Thura Shwe Man secretly visited North Korea via China and signed many agreements for military co-operation between the countries, secret files received by Mizzima revealed.
Postponement of the US delegation coincided with the official visit of Premier Wen Jiabao of junta ally China. Burma’s northern neighbour is also one of North Korea’s few allies.
Wen held talks with Burmese junta leader Senior General Than Shwe in Naypyidaw today. During his visit, Chinese officials have signed at least a dozen bilateral agreements with the junta, which included deals to boost access to Burma’s energy resources, such as gas and hydropower, and for Beijing to provide financial assistance to the repressive military dictatorship, a source from Naypyidaw told Mizzima.
It is likely that had Webb chosen to go to Burma anyway, both the senator and the Obama administration would have drawn heavy criticism from Republican politicians and a large number of Democrats opposed to taking a soft line with Burma’s generals and meeting the regime the same week as an official high-level Chinese delegation.
Many members of Burma’s opposition movement remain wary of Webb’s approach to dealing with the Burmese regime and his overall viewpoint on the situation in the country. In his 2008 book A Time to Fight: Reclaiming a Fair and Just America, Webb claimed that the Burmese regime’s September 2007 crackdown against the protesting monks of the “saffron revolution” could have been avoided if there had been more western engagement with the regime.
He wrote: “If Westerners had remained in the country this moment might never have occurred, because it is entirely possible that conditions may have improved rather than deteriorated.”
Apparently Webb was unaware that in 2007 and still today, the largest single source of revenue for the Burmese regime comes from a natural gas project run by France’s Total and the US energy giant Chevron.
Burmese dissidents were furious at Webb’s very public attempts to woo Burma’s generals.
In response to Webb’s meeting last year with junta leader Than Shwe, U Pyinya Zawta, one of the founders of the All Burma Monks’ Alliance that led the saffron revolution wrote a scathing editorial about Webb’s engagement efforts in the Irrawaddy Magazine. According to the former political prisoner, “Webb is now despised by the people of Burma. If he succeeds in achieving a shift in US policy to abandon sanctions, he will have secured his place in history as one of the most important supporters of Than Swe’s military dictatorship.”
Friday, 04 June 2010 00:29 Phanida
Chiang Mai (Mizzima) – The cancellation of US senator Jim Webb’s visit to Burma may cause increased tension between the Washington and the Burmese military regime, Burmese opposition party, the National League for Democracy, foresees.
The prediction from the main opposition party came after the US Sentate Foreign Relations East Asian and Pacific affairs subcommittee chairman, Jim Webb, announced the postponement of his visit at short notice today.
“The tension will be heightened between US and the regime based on this matter”, NLD central executive committee member Win Tin said.
He added that the new engagement policy adopted by US President Barack Obama was failing.
Webb had planned to meet NLD vice-chairman Tin Oo along with seven party central executive panel members including, Win Tin and Nyan Win, at the residence of the US chargé d’ affaires Larry Dinger in Rangoon on Saturday afternoon.
In his statement today, he said that he was concerned over an alleged attempt by Burma to acquire nuclear weapons from North Korea and that he would not make a further visit to Burma until the ruling junta resolved this issue completely. The nuclear bid would represent a breach of UN Security Council resolutions.
The potential breach would fly in the face of recent comments by Science and Technology Minister U Thaung at a meeting between US assistant secretary of state for East Asia and Pacific Affairs Dr. Kurt Campbell and State Peace and Development Council (the military junta’s own label for itself) ministers in Naypyidaw last month. U Thaung told the visiting US minister that the junta would “fully” comply with the Security Council resolutions 1718 and 1874 but at the same time, it had a responsibility to safeguard the “sovereignty of State” when the US minister raised the nuclear issue.
After North Korean detonated its first nuclear device in a test on October 9, 2006, the United Nations Security Council imposed economic and financial sanctions against North Korea with Resolution 1718 on October 14.
After Pyongyang’s second test in May last year, the UN passed Resolution 1874 the following month, enabling UN member nations to check and inspect North Korean vessels and aircraft suspected of carrying nuclear weapons. The resolution also bans member countries any arms trading with North Korea.
Webb, who protested in principle against imposing sanctions on Burma, became the first top-level politician to meet Burmese junta chief Senior General Than Shwe on August 15 last year.
Washington suspects the Burmese junta of buying nuclear weapons from North Korea, NLD Liberated Area foreign affairs committee leader Nyo Ohn Myint said.
During 2008, a junta military delegation led by General Thura Shwe Man secretly visited North Korea via China and signed many agreements for military co-operation between the countries, secret files received by Mizzima revealed.
Postponement of the US delegation coincided with the official visit of Premier Wen Jiabao of junta ally China. Burma’s northern neighbour is also one of North Korea’s few allies.
Wen held talks with Burmese junta leader Senior General Than Shwe in Naypyidaw today. During his visit, Chinese officials have signed at least a dozen bilateral agreements with the junta, which included deals to boost access to Burma’s energy resources, such as gas and hydropower, and for Beijing to provide financial assistance to the repressive military dictatorship, a source from Naypyidaw told Mizzima.
It is likely that had Webb chosen to go to Burma anyway, both the senator and the Obama administration would have drawn heavy criticism from Republican politicians and a large number of Democrats opposed to taking a soft line with Burma’s generals and meeting the regime the same week as an official high-level Chinese delegation.
Many members of Burma’s opposition movement remain wary of Webb’s approach to dealing with the Burmese regime and his overall viewpoint on the situation in the country. In his 2008 book A Time to Fight: Reclaiming a Fair and Just America, Webb claimed that the Burmese regime’s September 2007 crackdown against the protesting monks of the “saffron revolution” could have been avoided if there had been more western engagement with the regime.
He wrote: “If Westerners had remained in the country this moment might never have occurred, because it is entirely possible that conditions may have improved rather than deteriorated.”
Apparently Webb was unaware that in 2007 and still today, the largest single source of revenue for the Burmese regime comes from a natural gas project run by France’s Total and the US energy giant Chevron.
Burmese dissidents were furious at Webb’s very public attempts to woo Burma’s generals.
In response to Webb’s meeting last year with junta leader Than Shwe, U Pyinya Zawta, one of the founders of the All Burma Monks’ Alliance that led the saffron revolution wrote a scathing editorial about Webb’s engagement efforts in the Irrawaddy Magazine. According to the former political prisoner, “Webb is now despised by the people of Burma. If he succeeds in achieving a shift in US policy to abandon sanctions, he will have secured his place in history as one of the most important supporters of Than Swe’s military dictatorship.”
*****************************************************
Public interest in polls dims: political parties
Friday, 04 June 2010 19:10 Myint Maung
New Delhi (Mizzima) – The Burmese people are losing interest in politics, according to parties approved by the Union Election Commission that are having difficulties on the campaign trail amid voter apathy.
The Union of Myanmar Federation of National Politics, Rakhine (Arakan) State National Force of Myanmar, Union Democratic Party, Diversity and Peace Party and the Democratic Party (Myanmar) were among the parties making the complaint.
“There is a 20-year gap between people and party politics so that we have difficulties in our organisational work such as dealing with people and dealing with other political parties,” Federation of National Politics liaison chief Ohn Lwin said.
“We have to say too much to people to [encourage them to] re-engage in politics as the idea that engaging in politics means languishing in jail, is deeply rooted …,” Wunthanu NLD (The Union of Myanmar) vice-chairman Ye Win said. “We have to explain too much to them on this issue especially in our campaigning in rural areas. The people are far too scared to join political parties and engage in politics.”
Democratic Party (Myanmar) general secretary Cho Cho Kyaw Nyein, 62, also said that the people were being intimidated and dared not step forward to participate in the political process to the extent that her party too was facing difficulties in motivating people.
Diversity and Peace Party secretary Nay Myo Wei also said that his party canvassers had to do a lot of persuading to hold people’s interest and put them at ease.
The UEC released a statement on May 29, which says parties will be deregistered unless they could not produce the prescribed membership numbers within 90 days from the date they receive permission to form a political party.
In applying for registration, the parties had to sign a pledge to organise a prescribed number for their party membership, ordered to be at least 1,000 for a national party and 500 for regional parties, within the prescribed period of 90 days.
They were also forced to coax colleagues and friends first to join so the parties could meet the quota within the prescribed or face dissolution, though they are not yet permitted to freely carry out campaigns.
This problem could be easily resolved if parties received the legal right to start their campaigns, Democratic Party Secretary Phyo Min Thein said.
“We are not the parties that can enjoy the backing by government and government-related organisations and individuals so that we will try to be a party representing the people. We have no problem with that,” he added. “But we need freedom for our party central organising committee’s … activities. The government and different levels of authorities should give us this freedom. If we get such freedom, we will have no problems.”
Apart from government-backed parties, other parties have operational difficulties, a political source said.
“We have much difficulty with our financing. It is impossible to complete our work in due course. For instance, we have to postpone work for about four or five days, even though it should be done today, because of our financial constraints,” Rakhine State National Force party chairman Aye Kyaing said.
“We are trying to run a campaign but we’re holding meetings on finance – who will contribute and how much,” Cho Cho Kyaw Nyein said. “We are even having difficulties meeting travel expenses.”
Nay Myo Wei said his party had campaign finance constraints.
Application for registration of a political party must be first initiated by 15 persons stating that they wish to form a party in accordance with the electoral laws by submitting their application to the UEC. The commission then scrutinises and processes these applications and informs the parties of the outcome.
After passing this first step, parties have to resubmit their party flags, seals and logos to the commission in an application signed by the parties’ chairman and vice-chairman, seeking permission for final registration. These branding items are put under the same commission scrutiny.
After being registered, the party must prove it has the minimum requirements for party membership within 90 days from the date of registration.
At least 42 parties have applied to the UEC, either re-registering, or setting up a new party. The commission announced yesterday it had granted registration to 28 parties to out of a total 32 applicants. The government has yet to announce the election date.
The following is a list of the 28 parties that have been recognised by the UEC and the dates on which they became fully registered political parties:
Friday, 04 June 2010 19:10 Myint Maung
New Delhi (Mizzima) – The Burmese people are losing interest in politics, according to parties approved by the Union Election Commission that are having difficulties on the campaign trail amid voter apathy.
The Union of Myanmar Federation of National Politics, Rakhine (Arakan) State National Force of Myanmar, Union Democratic Party, Diversity and Peace Party and the Democratic Party (Myanmar) were among the parties making the complaint.
“There is a 20-year gap between people and party politics so that we have difficulties in our organisational work such as dealing with people and dealing with other political parties,” Federation of National Politics liaison chief Ohn Lwin said.
“We have to say too much to people to [encourage them to] re-engage in politics as the idea that engaging in politics means languishing in jail, is deeply rooted …,” Wunthanu NLD (The Union of Myanmar) vice-chairman Ye Win said. “We have to explain too much to them on this issue especially in our campaigning in rural areas. The people are far too scared to join political parties and engage in politics.”
Democratic Party (Myanmar) general secretary Cho Cho Kyaw Nyein, 62, also said that the people were being intimidated and dared not step forward to participate in the political process to the extent that her party too was facing difficulties in motivating people.
Diversity and Peace Party secretary Nay Myo Wei also said that his party canvassers had to do a lot of persuading to hold people’s interest and put them at ease.
The UEC released a statement on May 29, which says parties will be deregistered unless they could not produce the prescribed membership numbers within 90 days from the date they receive permission to form a political party.
In applying for registration, the parties had to sign a pledge to organise a prescribed number for their party membership, ordered to be at least 1,000 for a national party and 500 for regional parties, within the prescribed period of 90 days.
They were also forced to coax colleagues and friends first to join so the parties could meet the quota within the prescribed or face dissolution, though they are not yet permitted to freely carry out campaigns.
This problem could be easily resolved if parties received the legal right to start their campaigns, Democratic Party Secretary Phyo Min Thein said.
“We are not the parties that can enjoy the backing by government and government-related organisations and individuals so that we will try to be a party representing the people. We have no problem with that,” he added. “But we need freedom for our party central organising committee’s … activities. The government and different levels of authorities should give us this freedom. If we get such freedom, we will have no problems.”
Apart from government-backed parties, other parties have operational difficulties, a political source said.
“We have much difficulty with our financing. It is impossible to complete our work in due course. For instance, we have to postpone work for about four or five days, even though it should be done today, because of our financial constraints,” Rakhine State National Force party chairman Aye Kyaing said.
“We are trying to run a campaign but we’re holding meetings on finance – who will contribute and how much,” Cho Cho Kyaw Nyein said. “We are even having difficulties meeting travel expenses.”
Nay Myo Wei said his party had campaign finance constraints.
Application for registration of a political party must be first initiated by 15 persons stating that they wish to form a party in accordance with the electoral laws by submitting their application to the UEC. The commission then scrutinises and processes these applications and informs the parties of the outcome.
After passing this first step, parties have to resubmit their party flags, seals and logos to the commission in an application signed by the parties’ chairman and vice-chairman, seeking permission for final registration. These branding items are put under the same commission scrutiny.
After being registered, the party must prove it has the minimum requirements for party membership within 90 days from the date of registration.
At least 42 parties have applied to the UEC, either re-registering, or setting up a new party. The commission announced yesterday it had granted registration to 28 parties to out of a total 32 applicants. The government has yet to announce the election date.
The following is a list of the 28 parties that have been recognised by the UEC and the dates on which they became fully registered political parties:
*****************************************************
DVB News - Expert says Burma ‘planning nuclear bomb’
By ROBERT KELLEY
Published: 3 June 2010
A five-year investigation by DVB has uncovered evidence that Burma is embarking on a programme to develop nuclear weaponry. At the centre of the investigation is Sai Thein Win, a former defense engineer and missile expert who worked in factories in Burma where he was tasked to make prototype components for missile and nuclear programs.
Sai contacted DVB after learning of its investigation into Burma’s military programmes, and supplied various documents and colour photographs of the equipment built inside the factories. The investigation has also uncovered evidence of North Korean involvement in the development of Burmese missiles, as well as Russia’s training of Burmese nuclear technicians.
In collaboration with DVB, American nuclear scientist and a former director in the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), Robert Kelley, has spent months examining this material. Here he writes in an exclusive report for DVB that Burma is probably mining uranium and exploring nuclear technology that is only “useful only for weapons”. For the full 30-page report, click here.
A remarkable individual has come out of Burma to describe nuclear-related activities in that secretive country. DVB has interviewed this man at length and is presenting his evidence here for all to see. His name is Sai Thein Win, and until recently he was a major in the Burmese army. He was trained in Burma as a defense engineer, and later in Russia as a missile expert. He returned to Burma to work in special factories, built to house modern European machining tools, to build prototypes for missile and nuclear activities.
Sai brought with him some documents and colour photographs of equipment built in these factories. DVB is publishing these photos and has arranged with experts to analyze what they have discovered. Some will no doubt want to weigh in and add their conclusions – no doubt there will be detractors who do not agree with the analysis and our conclusion that these objects are designed for use in a nuclear weapons development program. We invite their criticism and hope that any additional analysis will eventually reinforce our view that Burma is engaged in activities that are prohibited under international agreements.
DVB has hundreds of other photos taken in Burma inside closed facilities, as well as countless other information sources and documents. Background information is given for the very specific information Sai is providing.
In the last two years certain “laptop documents” have surfaced that purport to show that Iran is engaged in a clandestine nuclear program. The origin of these documents is not clear but they have generated a huge international debate over Iran’s intentions. The Burmese documents and photographs brought by Sai are much closer to the original source materials and the route of their disclosure is perfectly clear. The debate over these documents should be interesting in the non-proliferation community.
Who is Sai Thein Win?
Sai was a major in the Burmese army. He saw a DVB documentary about special factories in Burma that had been built by the regime to make components for Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD). He worked in two of these factories and felt there was more that needed to be conveyed outside Burma. Sai came out to Thailand to tell the world what he has seen and what he was asked to do. What he has to say adds to the testimony of many other Burmese defectors, but he supplements it with many colour photographs of the buildings and what they are building inside them. In addition he can describe the special demonstrations he attended and can name the people and places associated with the Burmese nuclear program that he visited.
Sai Thein Win reminds us of Mordecai Vanunu, an Israeli technician at the Dimona nuclear site in the Negev desert. Vanunu took many photographs of activities in Israel that were allegedly related to nuclear fuel cycle and weapons development. These photos were published in the Sunday Times in London in 1986. They purportedly showed nuclear weapons activities in Israel at the time. Israel has never confirmed that the images were taken in their facilities; much less that Israel even has a nuclear weapons program. But Vanunu was abducted, tried in an Israeli court and sentenced to many years in prison for divulging state secrets. Sai is providing similar information.
What is the Program that Sai Describes?
Sai tells us that he was tasked to make prototype components for missile and nuclear programs. He is an experienced mechanical engineer and he is capable of describing machining operations very accurately.
Sai has very accurately described a missile fuel pump impeller he made because he is trained as a missile engineer. His information on nuclear programs is based upon many colour photographs and two visits to the nuclear battalion at Thabeikkyin, north of Mandalay. The Nuclear Battalion is the organization charged with building up a nuclear weapons capability in Burma. The Nuclear Battalion will try to do this by building a nuclear reactor and nuclear enrichment capabilities.
It is DVB consultants’ firm belief that Burma is probably not capable of building the equipment they have been charged to build: to manufacture a nuclear weapon, to build a weapons material supply, and to do it in a professional way. But the information provided by Sai and other reporters from Burma clearly indicates that the regime has the intent to go nuclear and it is trying and expending huge resources along the way.
Factories filled with European equipment
Two companies in Singapore with German connections sold many machine tools to the Burmese government, notably the Department of Technical and Vocational Education (DTVE). DTVE is closely associated with the Department of Atomic Energy (DAE) which is subordinate to the Ministry of Science and Technology (MOST). A great deal of information is known about people and organizations in this chain. DTVE is probably a front for military purchasing for weapons of mass destruction; that is to say nuclear, chemical and biological weapons and the means to deliver them, largely missiles.
The German government did not have derogatory information about DTVE when the tools were sold and allowed the sale. Fortunately, although the machine tools were very expensive and capable, they were sold without all of the accessories to make the very precision parts required for many missile and nuclear applications. These factories are only making prototypes and first models of equipment for other research organizations. They are not making serial copies for a production program and they do not do research themselves
The companies believed the machines were to be used for educational and vocational training, but the German government, suspicious about the end use, sent a diplomat and an expert to examine the machines that were installed in two special factories in Burma. The expert was suspicious that the machines would be used for uses other than training; there were no students and no universities nearby, and there were no women students. The expert noted that none of the male students wore military uniforms.
DVB has examined the photos and some of the “students” who wore civilian clothes during the expert visit wear military uniforms when the Europeans are not there.
Sai provided recognizable photos of the equipment installers and the Germans during their site visit. This is one of many indications that he was at the factories and that his story is very credible. It is also fortunate that the German government was diligent and visited these factories to verify the end use. The Burmese were probably not telling the whole truth, but the visits allow serious verification of the facts.
Sai has provided DVB with many photos of material that the Nuclear Battalion at Thabeikkyin is requesting. One of the most obvious ones is requested in an accompanying secret memo from the No (1) Science and Technology Regiment at Thabeikkyin to the Special Factory Number One near Pyin Oo Lwin. It is for a “bomb reactor” for the “special substance production research department” and there are some sketches of what is wanted as well as pictures. A bomb reactor in a nuclear program is a special device for turning uranium compounds into uranium metal for use in nuclear fuel or a nuclear bomb. The pictures and sketches are of such a bomb reactor and one of the pictures has been subjected to high temperature. The paint is burned off and it has been used. It may be a design from a foreign country or a Burmese design. But the need for a bomb reactor in a Burmese Nuclear Battalion is a strong signal that the project is trying to make uranium metal. Whether the uranium metal is used in a plutonium production reactor or a nuclear device, Burma is exploring nuclear technology that is useful only for weapons.
Sai also provided photos of chemical engineering machinery that can be used for making uranium compounds such as uranium hexafluoride gas, used in uranium enrichment. He describes nozzles used in advanced lasers that separate uranium isotopes into materials used for bombs. He provides pictures of a glove box for mixing reactive materials and furnaces for making uranium compounds. All of these things could have other uses, but taken together, in the context of the Nuclear Battalion, they are for a nuclear weapons program.
Sai has been told that the regime is planning to build a nuclear reactor to make plutonium for a nuclear bomb. He has seen a demonstration of a reactor component called a “control rod” that fits this story. He has been told that the regime plans to enrich uranium for a bomb and he has seen a demonstration of a carbon monoxide laser that will be part of this enrichment process. He has named the individuals he met and heard from at Thabeikkyin and they can be correlated through open source information with their jobs for the Burmese Department of Atomic Energy. Many are frequent visitors to IAEA grant training projects. He himself was tasked to make nozzles for the carbon monoxide laser. He actually knows less about the chemical industrial equipment seen in his photos than we can judge, but his overall story is quite interesting. It is also clear that the demonstrations and explanations that he has seen are quite crude. If they are the best Burma can do they have a long way to go.
How does Sai fit into the overall Burma story?
Sai is a mechanical engineer with experience in machining parts on highly specialized and modern machine tools. These machine tools make items that are very precise and can be used in nuclear energy programs or to make missiles. Sai is not a nuclear expert and he has little to say about the things he made, or that his factory made other than what he was told about their uses. He does provide photos of items that would be used in the nuclear industry to process uranium compounds into forms used in the nuclear weapons development process. These photos or his descriptions could be faked, but they are highly consistent with the uses he suggests.
Sai received a degree as a defense engineer in Burma. He then went to Russia to train in missile technology at the prestigious Bauman Institute in Moscow. He can document all of this. His friends went to Russia as well and studied nuclear and chemical technology at the Moscow Institute of Engineering Physics (MIFI) and the Mendeleev Institute of Chemical Technology. MIFI was the main training institute for Soviet nuclear weapons designers for many years. The ones who studied chemistry at Mendeleev are probably the ones who are most important in building the special equipment that Sai knew about.
Stories about a nuclear reactor in Burma
There have many wild stories about a nuclear reactor in Burma. It is clear that Burma and Russia considered building a 10 Megawatt (10 MW) research reactor in Burma in 2000. It is also clear that this deal was not closed and that Russia announced only intent to build a 10 MW reactor around 2008. This reactor has not been built and Russia is highly unlikely to approve such a deal unless Burma signs a new special agreement with the IAEA. This agreement is called an Additional Protocol and Burma is very unlikely to sign it because it would give the IAEA the access it needs to discover a clandestine nuclear program in Burma.
Furthermore, a 10 MW nuclear reactor is a very small concern for proliferation. Such reactors are common in the world and they are simply too small to be of serious proliferation concern. They can be used to teach students how to work in the nuclear area, but they are not appropriate to rapidly make any serious quantities of plutonium for bombs. IAEA has standards for which reactors are especially suitable for plutonium production and this proposed reactor is below that limit. It is appropriate only for nuclear technology training and the production of medical radioisotopes. Local production of medical isotopes is one of the main reasons for reactors in the 10 MW class around the world. Burma could use this reactor for training, but reports that it bought a 10 MW reactor from Russia are clearly untrue, and stories that they want to build one of their own for a bomb program are nonsense.
The idea that Burma is building a larger reactor, like the alleged one Israel destroyed in Syria, is more interesting. This could be a plutonium production reactor, like the 25 MW (thermal) one that North Korea operated in Yongbyon. The fact that North Korea would consider supporting nuclear programs outside its own borders, in client states like Syria, is of serious concern when evaluating Burma. North Korea does have a memorandum of understanding to help Burma build intermediate range ballistic missiles but their role in the nuclear program is only anecdotal.
Is Burma violating its international agreements?
The most important agreement that Burma must satisfy is its agreement with the IAEA. It signed an agreement with the IAEA in 1995 that it would not pursue nuclear weapons under a carefully defined standard international legal agreement. A supplement to this agreement, a so-called Small Quantities Protocol, said that Burma had no nuclear facilities and very small amounts of nuclear materials, which it did not even have to itemise. As a result of this declaration, which was accepted by the IAEA, there are no nuclear safeguards inspections in Burma. There are some IAEA visits to Burma, because Burma is a recipient of IAEA scientific grant money for humanitarian purposes.
Some of these grants train Burmese scientists for nuclear activities that could enable them to produce nuclear materials, but these are not the majority of the grants.
Burma has certified that it has no nuclear facilities, has minimal nuclear materials, and has no plans to change this situation. The information brought by Sai suggests that Burma is mining uranium, converting it to uranium compounds for reactors and bombs, and is trying to build a reactor and or an enrichment plant that could only be useful for a bomb. There is no chance that these activities are directed at a reactor to produce electricity in Burma. This is beyond Burma’s engineering capabilities. It is up to Burma to notify the IAEA if these conditions have changed. Clearly, if it is trying to secretly build a bomb and is breaking these rules it will not be voluntarily notifying the IAEA.
Burma has also purchased high quality machine tools from a German machine tool broker in Singapore that can be used for weapons of mass destruction manufacture. These tools could be used to make many things but they are of a size and quality that are not consistent with student training, the declared end use.
The Department of Technical and Vocational training is a front for weapons procurement and is associated with the DAE and MOST. All of these departments, programs, and people associated with them, should be sanctioned and prohibited from buying anything that could contribute to weapons programs.
What is the state of Burma’s nuclear program?
We have examined the photos of the Burmese nuclear program very carefully and looked at Sai’s evidence. The quality of the parts they are machining is poor. The mechanical drawings to produce these parts in a machine shop are unacceptably poor. If someone really plans to build a nuclear weapon, a very complex device made up of precision components, then Burma is not ready. This could be because the information brought by Sai is not complete or because Burma is playing in the field but is not ready to be serious. In any case, nothing we have seen suggests Burma will be successful with the materials and component we have seen.
What is significant is intent. Burma is trying to mine uranium and upgrade uranium compounds through chemical processing. The photos show several steps in this intent. Burma is reported to be planning and building a nuclear reactor to make plutonium and is trying to enrich uranium to make a bomb. These activities are inconsistent with their signed obligations with the IAEA.
Even if Burma is not able to succeed with their illegal program, they have set off alarm bells in the international community devoted to preventing weapons of mass destruction proliferation. The IAEA should ask Burma if its stated declarations are true. If these allegations appear real there should be follow-up questions and inspections of alleged activities. This effort will be hampered by Burma’s failure to sign the Additional Protocol. Under the current Small Quantities Protocol Agreement, IAEA has no power to inspect in Burma.
Burma is also trying to build medium-range missiles such as SCUDs under a memorandum of understanding with North Korea. SCUDS are not likely to carry a Burmese nuclear warhead because first generation nuclear warheads are usually too heavy and large for the SCUD missile. But there is little reason to embark on SCUD missiles and nuclear weapons other than to threaten ones near-neighbours. Burma is ruled by a junta that has no real political philosophy other than greed. The junta rules for the purpose of enriching a small cadre with the rich resources of the country: teak, gold, jade, other minerals and the labour of the people. Like their model, North Korea, the junta hopes to remain safe from foreign interference by being too dangerous to invade. Nuclear weapons contribute to that immunity.
Conclusions
DVB has interviewed many sources from inside Burma’s military programs. Many other researchers are interviewing former Burmese military people, for example Dictator Watch and Desmond Ball with Phil Thornton. They have provided anecdotal evidence pointing to a Burmese nuclear weapons program. Sai has clarified these reports and added to them with colour photos and personal descriptions of his visits to the Nuclear Battalion. He trained in Moscow in missile technology along with friends who trained in nuclear technology who later vanished into the Nuclear Battalion of Thabeikkyin. All were trained in some of Russia’s first quality institutes.
The total picture is very compelling. Burma is trying to build pieces of a nuclear program, specifically a nuclear reactor to make plutonium and a uranium enrichment program. Burma has a close partnership with North Korea. North Korea has recently been accused of trying to build a nuclear reactor inside Syria to make plutonium for a nuclear program in Syria or North Korea. The timeframe of North Korean assistance to Syria is roughly the same as Burma so the connection may not be coincidental.
If Burma is trying to develop nuclear weapons the international community needs to react. There needs to be a thorough investigation of well-founded reporting. If these reports prove compelling, then there need to be sanctions of known organizations in Burma and for equipment for any weapons of mass destruction.
Kelley, 63, a former Los Alamos weapons scientist, was an IAEA director from 1992 to 1993, and again from 2001 to 2005. Based in Vienna, Austria, he conducted weapons inspections in Libya, Iraq, and South Africa, and compliance inspections in Egypt, Turkey, South Korea, Taiwan, Syria, Tanzania, Pakistan, India, and Congo, among others.
By ROBERT KELLEY
Published: 3 June 2010
A five-year investigation by DVB has uncovered evidence that Burma is embarking on a programme to develop nuclear weaponry. At the centre of the investigation is Sai Thein Win, a former defense engineer and missile expert who worked in factories in Burma where he was tasked to make prototype components for missile and nuclear programs.
Sai contacted DVB after learning of its investigation into Burma’s military programmes, and supplied various documents and colour photographs of the equipment built inside the factories. The investigation has also uncovered evidence of North Korean involvement in the development of Burmese missiles, as well as Russia’s training of Burmese nuclear technicians.
In collaboration with DVB, American nuclear scientist and a former director in the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), Robert Kelley, has spent months examining this material. Here he writes in an exclusive report for DVB that Burma is probably mining uranium and exploring nuclear technology that is only “useful only for weapons”. For the full 30-page report, click here.
A remarkable individual has come out of Burma to describe nuclear-related activities in that secretive country. DVB has interviewed this man at length and is presenting his evidence here for all to see. His name is Sai Thein Win, and until recently he was a major in the Burmese army. He was trained in Burma as a defense engineer, and later in Russia as a missile expert. He returned to Burma to work in special factories, built to house modern European machining tools, to build prototypes for missile and nuclear activities.
Sai brought with him some documents and colour photographs of equipment built in these factories. DVB is publishing these photos and has arranged with experts to analyze what they have discovered. Some will no doubt want to weigh in and add their conclusions – no doubt there will be detractors who do not agree with the analysis and our conclusion that these objects are designed for use in a nuclear weapons development program. We invite their criticism and hope that any additional analysis will eventually reinforce our view that Burma is engaged in activities that are prohibited under international agreements.
DVB has hundreds of other photos taken in Burma inside closed facilities, as well as countless other information sources and documents. Background information is given for the very specific information Sai is providing.
In the last two years certain “laptop documents” have surfaced that purport to show that Iran is engaged in a clandestine nuclear program. The origin of these documents is not clear but they have generated a huge international debate over Iran’s intentions. The Burmese documents and photographs brought by Sai are much closer to the original source materials and the route of their disclosure is perfectly clear. The debate over these documents should be interesting in the non-proliferation community.
Who is Sai Thein Win?
Sai was a major in the Burmese army. He saw a DVB documentary about special factories in Burma that had been built by the regime to make components for Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD). He worked in two of these factories and felt there was more that needed to be conveyed outside Burma. Sai came out to Thailand to tell the world what he has seen and what he was asked to do. What he has to say adds to the testimony of many other Burmese defectors, but he supplements it with many colour photographs of the buildings and what they are building inside them. In addition he can describe the special demonstrations he attended and can name the people and places associated with the Burmese nuclear program that he visited.
Sai Thein Win reminds us of Mordecai Vanunu, an Israeli technician at the Dimona nuclear site in the Negev desert. Vanunu took many photographs of activities in Israel that were allegedly related to nuclear fuel cycle and weapons development. These photos were published in the Sunday Times in London in 1986. They purportedly showed nuclear weapons activities in Israel at the time. Israel has never confirmed that the images were taken in their facilities; much less that Israel even has a nuclear weapons program. But Vanunu was abducted, tried in an Israeli court and sentenced to many years in prison for divulging state secrets. Sai is providing similar information.
What is the Program that Sai Describes?
Sai tells us that he was tasked to make prototype components for missile and nuclear programs. He is an experienced mechanical engineer and he is capable of describing machining operations very accurately.
Sai has very accurately described a missile fuel pump impeller he made because he is trained as a missile engineer. His information on nuclear programs is based upon many colour photographs and two visits to the nuclear battalion at Thabeikkyin, north of Mandalay. The Nuclear Battalion is the organization charged with building up a nuclear weapons capability in Burma. The Nuclear Battalion will try to do this by building a nuclear reactor and nuclear enrichment capabilities.
It is DVB consultants’ firm belief that Burma is probably not capable of building the equipment they have been charged to build: to manufacture a nuclear weapon, to build a weapons material supply, and to do it in a professional way. But the information provided by Sai and other reporters from Burma clearly indicates that the regime has the intent to go nuclear and it is trying and expending huge resources along the way.
Factories filled with European equipment
Two companies in Singapore with German connections sold many machine tools to the Burmese government, notably the Department of Technical and Vocational Education (DTVE). DTVE is closely associated with the Department of Atomic Energy (DAE) which is subordinate to the Ministry of Science and Technology (MOST). A great deal of information is known about people and organizations in this chain. DTVE is probably a front for military purchasing for weapons of mass destruction; that is to say nuclear, chemical and biological weapons and the means to deliver them, largely missiles.
The German government did not have derogatory information about DTVE when the tools were sold and allowed the sale. Fortunately, although the machine tools were very expensive and capable, they were sold without all of the accessories to make the very precision parts required for many missile and nuclear applications. These factories are only making prototypes and first models of equipment for other research organizations. They are not making serial copies for a production program and they do not do research themselves
The companies believed the machines were to be used for educational and vocational training, but the German government, suspicious about the end use, sent a diplomat and an expert to examine the machines that were installed in two special factories in Burma. The expert was suspicious that the machines would be used for uses other than training; there were no students and no universities nearby, and there were no women students. The expert noted that none of the male students wore military uniforms.
DVB has examined the photos and some of the “students” who wore civilian clothes during the expert visit wear military uniforms when the Europeans are not there.
Sai provided recognizable photos of the equipment installers and the Germans during their site visit. This is one of many indications that he was at the factories and that his story is very credible. It is also fortunate that the German government was diligent and visited these factories to verify the end use. The Burmese were probably not telling the whole truth, but the visits allow serious verification of the facts.
Sai has provided DVB with many photos of material that the Nuclear Battalion at Thabeikkyin is requesting. One of the most obvious ones is requested in an accompanying secret memo from the No (1) Science and Technology Regiment at Thabeikkyin to the Special Factory Number One near Pyin Oo Lwin. It is for a “bomb reactor” for the “special substance production research department” and there are some sketches of what is wanted as well as pictures. A bomb reactor in a nuclear program is a special device for turning uranium compounds into uranium metal for use in nuclear fuel or a nuclear bomb. The pictures and sketches are of such a bomb reactor and one of the pictures has been subjected to high temperature. The paint is burned off and it has been used. It may be a design from a foreign country or a Burmese design. But the need for a bomb reactor in a Burmese Nuclear Battalion is a strong signal that the project is trying to make uranium metal. Whether the uranium metal is used in a plutonium production reactor or a nuclear device, Burma is exploring nuclear technology that is useful only for weapons.
Sai also provided photos of chemical engineering machinery that can be used for making uranium compounds such as uranium hexafluoride gas, used in uranium enrichment. He describes nozzles used in advanced lasers that separate uranium isotopes into materials used for bombs. He provides pictures of a glove box for mixing reactive materials and furnaces for making uranium compounds. All of these things could have other uses, but taken together, in the context of the Nuclear Battalion, they are for a nuclear weapons program.
Sai has been told that the regime is planning to build a nuclear reactor to make plutonium for a nuclear bomb. He has seen a demonstration of a reactor component called a “control rod” that fits this story. He has been told that the regime plans to enrich uranium for a bomb and he has seen a demonstration of a carbon monoxide laser that will be part of this enrichment process. He has named the individuals he met and heard from at Thabeikkyin and they can be correlated through open source information with their jobs for the Burmese Department of Atomic Energy. Many are frequent visitors to IAEA grant training projects. He himself was tasked to make nozzles for the carbon monoxide laser. He actually knows less about the chemical industrial equipment seen in his photos than we can judge, but his overall story is quite interesting. It is also clear that the demonstrations and explanations that he has seen are quite crude. If they are the best Burma can do they have a long way to go.
How does Sai fit into the overall Burma story?
Sai is a mechanical engineer with experience in machining parts on highly specialized and modern machine tools. These machine tools make items that are very precise and can be used in nuclear energy programs or to make missiles. Sai is not a nuclear expert and he has little to say about the things he made, or that his factory made other than what he was told about their uses. He does provide photos of items that would be used in the nuclear industry to process uranium compounds into forms used in the nuclear weapons development process. These photos or his descriptions could be faked, but they are highly consistent with the uses he suggests.
Sai received a degree as a defense engineer in Burma. He then went to Russia to train in missile technology at the prestigious Bauman Institute in Moscow. He can document all of this. His friends went to Russia as well and studied nuclear and chemical technology at the Moscow Institute of Engineering Physics (MIFI) and the Mendeleev Institute of Chemical Technology. MIFI was the main training institute for Soviet nuclear weapons designers for many years. The ones who studied chemistry at Mendeleev are probably the ones who are most important in building the special equipment that Sai knew about.
Stories about a nuclear reactor in Burma
There have many wild stories about a nuclear reactor in Burma. It is clear that Burma and Russia considered building a 10 Megawatt (10 MW) research reactor in Burma in 2000. It is also clear that this deal was not closed and that Russia announced only intent to build a 10 MW reactor around 2008. This reactor has not been built and Russia is highly unlikely to approve such a deal unless Burma signs a new special agreement with the IAEA. This agreement is called an Additional Protocol and Burma is very unlikely to sign it because it would give the IAEA the access it needs to discover a clandestine nuclear program in Burma.
Furthermore, a 10 MW nuclear reactor is a very small concern for proliferation. Such reactors are common in the world and they are simply too small to be of serious proliferation concern. They can be used to teach students how to work in the nuclear area, but they are not appropriate to rapidly make any serious quantities of plutonium for bombs. IAEA has standards for which reactors are especially suitable for plutonium production and this proposed reactor is below that limit. It is appropriate only for nuclear technology training and the production of medical radioisotopes. Local production of medical isotopes is one of the main reasons for reactors in the 10 MW class around the world. Burma could use this reactor for training, but reports that it bought a 10 MW reactor from Russia are clearly untrue, and stories that they want to build one of their own for a bomb program are nonsense.
The idea that Burma is building a larger reactor, like the alleged one Israel destroyed in Syria, is more interesting. This could be a plutonium production reactor, like the 25 MW (thermal) one that North Korea operated in Yongbyon. The fact that North Korea would consider supporting nuclear programs outside its own borders, in client states like Syria, is of serious concern when evaluating Burma. North Korea does have a memorandum of understanding to help Burma build intermediate range ballistic missiles but their role in the nuclear program is only anecdotal.
Is Burma violating its international agreements?
The most important agreement that Burma must satisfy is its agreement with the IAEA. It signed an agreement with the IAEA in 1995 that it would not pursue nuclear weapons under a carefully defined standard international legal agreement. A supplement to this agreement, a so-called Small Quantities Protocol, said that Burma had no nuclear facilities and very small amounts of nuclear materials, which it did not even have to itemise. As a result of this declaration, which was accepted by the IAEA, there are no nuclear safeguards inspections in Burma. There are some IAEA visits to Burma, because Burma is a recipient of IAEA scientific grant money for humanitarian purposes.
Some of these grants train Burmese scientists for nuclear activities that could enable them to produce nuclear materials, but these are not the majority of the grants.
Burma has certified that it has no nuclear facilities, has minimal nuclear materials, and has no plans to change this situation. The information brought by Sai suggests that Burma is mining uranium, converting it to uranium compounds for reactors and bombs, and is trying to build a reactor and or an enrichment plant that could only be useful for a bomb. There is no chance that these activities are directed at a reactor to produce electricity in Burma. This is beyond Burma’s engineering capabilities. It is up to Burma to notify the IAEA if these conditions have changed. Clearly, if it is trying to secretly build a bomb and is breaking these rules it will not be voluntarily notifying the IAEA.
Burma has also purchased high quality machine tools from a German machine tool broker in Singapore that can be used for weapons of mass destruction manufacture. These tools could be used to make many things but they are of a size and quality that are not consistent with student training, the declared end use.
The Department of Technical and Vocational training is a front for weapons procurement and is associated with the DAE and MOST. All of these departments, programs, and people associated with them, should be sanctioned and prohibited from buying anything that could contribute to weapons programs.
What is the state of Burma’s nuclear program?
We have examined the photos of the Burmese nuclear program very carefully and looked at Sai’s evidence. The quality of the parts they are machining is poor. The mechanical drawings to produce these parts in a machine shop are unacceptably poor. If someone really plans to build a nuclear weapon, a very complex device made up of precision components, then Burma is not ready. This could be because the information brought by Sai is not complete or because Burma is playing in the field but is not ready to be serious. In any case, nothing we have seen suggests Burma will be successful with the materials and component we have seen.
What is significant is intent. Burma is trying to mine uranium and upgrade uranium compounds through chemical processing. The photos show several steps in this intent. Burma is reported to be planning and building a nuclear reactor to make plutonium and is trying to enrich uranium to make a bomb. These activities are inconsistent with their signed obligations with the IAEA.
Even if Burma is not able to succeed with their illegal program, they have set off alarm bells in the international community devoted to preventing weapons of mass destruction proliferation. The IAEA should ask Burma if its stated declarations are true. If these allegations appear real there should be follow-up questions and inspections of alleged activities. This effort will be hampered by Burma’s failure to sign the Additional Protocol. Under the current Small Quantities Protocol Agreement, IAEA has no power to inspect in Burma.
Burma is also trying to build medium-range missiles such as SCUDs under a memorandum of understanding with North Korea. SCUDS are not likely to carry a Burmese nuclear warhead because first generation nuclear warheads are usually too heavy and large for the SCUD missile. But there is little reason to embark on SCUD missiles and nuclear weapons other than to threaten ones near-neighbours. Burma is ruled by a junta that has no real political philosophy other than greed. The junta rules for the purpose of enriching a small cadre with the rich resources of the country: teak, gold, jade, other minerals and the labour of the people. Like their model, North Korea, the junta hopes to remain safe from foreign interference by being too dangerous to invade. Nuclear weapons contribute to that immunity.
Conclusions
DVB has interviewed many sources from inside Burma’s military programs. Many other researchers are interviewing former Burmese military people, for example Dictator Watch and Desmond Ball with Phil Thornton. They have provided anecdotal evidence pointing to a Burmese nuclear weapons program. Sai has clarified these reports and added to them with colour photos and personal descriptions of his visits to the Nuclear Battalion. He trained in Moscow in missile technology along with friends who trained in nuclear technology who later vanished into the Nuclear Battalion of Thabeikkyin. All were trained in some of Russia’s first quality institutes.
The total picture is very compelling. Burma is trying to build pieces of a nuclear program, specifically a nuclear reactor to make plutonium and a uranium enrichment program. Burma has a close partnership with North Korea. North Korea has recently been accused of trying to build a nuclear reactor inside Syria to make plutonium for a nuclear program in Syria or North Korea. The timeframe of North Korean assistance to Syria is roughly the same as Burma so the connection may not be coincidental.
If Burma is trying to develop nuclear weapons the international community needs to react. There needs to be a thorough investigation of well-founded reporting. If these reports prove compelling, then there need to be sanctions of known organizations in Burma and for equipment for any weapons of mass destruction.
Kelley, 63, a former Los Alamos weapons scientist, was an IAEA director from 1992 to 1993, and again from 2001 to 2005. Based in Vienna, Austria, he conducted weapons inspections in Libya, Iraq, and South Africa, and compliance inspections in Egypt, Turkey, South Korea, Taiwan, Syria, Tanzania, Pakistan, India, and Congo, among others.
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