Melbourne, August 01: As world concerns remain focused on the clandestine nuclear programme of North Korea and Iran, reports are filtering in of Myanmar’s isolated military junta may be just a few years from testing its first atomic bomb.
The key far-eastern nation is building a secret nuclear reactor and plutonium extraction facilities with North Korea’s help, Sydney Morning Herald has reported citing two key junta defectors.
The Myanmarese military has sited the reactor in mountain caves inter-linked by deep tunnels at Naung Laing in Northern part of the country, apparently to camouflage it from detection by satellites.
The secret complex, the paper said, runs parallel to a civilian reactor being built at another site by Russia that both the Moscow and Yangon authorities say will be put under international safeguards.
The revelations by the Australian Daily come as US Naval Warships recently shadowed a North Korean commercial vessel bound for Myanmar, suspecting it to be carrying contraband nuclear and missile components. However, the ship was not intercepted.
China and other Asian nations had helped persuade Myanmar to turn back the North Korean freighter, the Nam Kam 1. A month back Japanese police arrested a North Korean and two of its own nationals allegedly trying to export illegally to Myanmar magnetic measuring device that could be used to develop missiles.
The Hearld identified the two defectors as an officer with a Myanmar army’s secret nuclear battalion and the other a former executive and leading regime business partner, Htoo Trading, who handled nuclear contracts with Russia and North Korea.
It said the defectors were extensively interviewed separately over the past two years by Australian strategic experts and a Thai-based Australian journalist.
The defectors testimony brings into sharp focus, hints and sightings emerging recently of North Korean delegations visiting Myanmar, the paper said.
Washington, the report said, is increasingly concerned that Myanmar is the main nuclear proliferation threat from North Korea, after Israel destroyed in September 2007 a reactor that North Koreans were apparently building in Syria.
It said that one of the defectors was picked up by the US intelligence agencies last year. Some weeks later Myanmar protested to Thai about overflights made by US drones across its territory.
The key to clandestine nuclear cooperation between Myanmar and North Korea could be because of Pyongyong’s eye on securing supply of uranium from Yangon’s proven huge reserves and earning hard currency, the Herald said.
–Agencies