Global Security Newswire

New satellite photographs support the assertions of a Burmese ex-military officer that Myanmar's military junta is trying to build a nuclear weapons program, Bloomberg reported yesterday (see GSN, July 20).

A Tuesday article in Jane's Intelligence Review analyzed satellite images of security perimeters and facilities close to the capital city Naypyidaw and said they corroborate information provided by defector Sai Thein Win to a Burmese opposition group of plants and other installations claimed to fall under a new nuclear arms initiative.

"They will not make a bomb with the technology they currently possess or the intellectual capability," Jane’s researcher Allison Puccioni told Bloomberg. "The two factors do make it possible to have a route to one."

Sai asserted he was employed at two nuclear program plants. He provided the Norway-based exile group Democratic Voice of Burma with photographs taken inside the factories and related documents. The images examined by Jane's were all of the outside of the installations, Puccioni said.

The military intelligence journal described the junta's nuclear effort as "overly ambitious with limited expertise."

Myanmar is a member state to the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty and the International Atomic Energy Agency. However, it has not signed the U.N. nuclear watchdog's Additional Protocol, which would allow for greater scrutiny of the nation's nuclear operations.

"With Myanmar’s current freedom from sanctions and relative economic prosperity, the junta may be able to outsource the technical know-how and tools to reach its goals far sooner than expected," Jane's Editor Christian Le Mière said in a statement.

Ex-U.N. weapons monitor David Kay said the junta must be receiving help from foreign entities.

"Someone had to be assisting them. That's the frightening thing," he said. "Myanmar is uniquely incapable of carrying this through."

Observers have accused North Korea of exporting its nuclear know-how to Myanmar. During the Bush years in Washington, Pyongyang looked at providing the junta with nuclear aid and short-range missiles, former White House adviser Michael Green said.

In 2009, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said "we worry about the transfer of nuclear technology" and signs of illicit military collaboration between Naypyidaw and Pyongyang. "I’m not saying it is happening, but we want to be prepared to stand against it."

However, Kay said available information on Myanmar's alleged nuclear program indicates the nation is pursuing

uranium enrichment by lasers, which would be beyond North Korea's area of expertise. "If it is laser enrichment the finger points more toward Chinese assistance or some place in the former Soviet Union," he said (Peter Green, Bloomberg, July 21).

Clinton today called on the Burmese junta to avoid nuclear collaboration with North Korea, the Associated Press reported.

"We continue to be concerned by the reports that Burma may be seeking assistance from North Korea with regard to a nuclear program," Clinton said in Vietnam, where she participated in a regional security forum of Southeast Asian states. "We will be discussing further ways in which we can cooperate to alter the actions of the government in Burma" (Matthew Lee, Associated Press/Washington Post, July 22).

As a signatory to the IAEA Small Quantities Protocol, Myanmar is permitted to have a maximum of 10 metric tons of raw uranium and 2.2 pounds of plutonium that it does not have to disclose to the agency, the Inter Press Service reported.

This would allow Myanmar to withhold specifics regarding new atomic sites up to half a year before they open, the news organization stated.

The government should sign the Additional Protocol to address concerns about its atomic efforts, said former IAEA director Robert Kelley, who authored the Democratic Voice of Burma report on the country's alleged atomic activities.

It "is very strange; it is very suspicious," he said. "They are exploiting a loophole in the Small Quantities Protocol and getting away (with it)."

"There is clear evidence that there is a place where steps are being taken towards building a nuclear program," Kelley added. "But there is no sign of a weapons program yet."

At the September 2009 IAEA General Conference, Burmese envoy Tin Win assured attendees of Myanmar's support for a "nuclear weapon-free world."

"Myanmar currently has no major nuclear facility," the diplomat said at the time (Marwann Macan-markar, Inter Press Service/Irrawaddy, July 22).