Burma’s nuclear secrets

(SMH) -Is the military junta preparing to build a nuclear arsenal? Two years of interviews with defectors have persuaded two Australian investigators there’s more to the claim than global scepticism suggests. The report by Desmond Ball and Phil Thornton was the basis for this article.

A FEW years back, a paranoid military regime packed up Burma’s capital and shifted it north a few hundred kilometres. Rangoon, it seems, simply wasn’t safe enough any more. The generals’ new home was to be known as the Abode of Kings; more commonly as Naypyidaw. A city rose from the tropical plains with shiny buildings and slick roadways – a strange priority in a country suffering chronic poverty and a health system at the bottom of world rankings.

Now, a fresh question hangs over the goals of Burmese rulers. Could this junta’s priorities be so skewed as to embark upon construction of a nuclear arsenal? And might it have reached out for help to another paranoid regime, North Korea?

Desmond Ball and Phil Thornton are convinced this is a genuine threat. They have spent two years on the Burmese border, interviewing defectors who claim to know the regime’s plans.

The testimony of two Burmese men in particular has caused Ball and Thornton to confront their own deep scepticism about the claims.

Theirs might seem an unlikely collaboration – Ball, a professor of strategic studies at ANU with a deep interest in nuclear technology, and Thornton, a freelance journalist based in Thailand. But their report on the two defectors’ claims adds to mounting – albeit sketchy – evidence that Burma may be chasing the bomb.

There have been hints Burma aspires to a nuclear program. What is uncertain is the extent and intent. Rumours have swirled around refugee circles outside Burma about secret military installations, tunnels dug into the mountains to hide nuclear facilities, the establishment of a ‘‘nuclear battalion’’ in the army and work done by foreign scientists. But one defector – known as Moe Jo to protect his identity – gives the claims added weight. He warned of the regime having a handful of bombs ready by 2020.

Moe Jo escaped Burmese army service and fled to Thailand. Ball and Thornton met with him in dingy rooms and safehouses. ‘‘His hands shook and he worried about what price his family would have to pay for his actions,’’ they write. ‘‘Before rejecting his country’s nuclear plans, Moe Jo was an officer with 10 years’ exemplary army service. A former graduate of Burma’s prestigious Defence Services Academy, he specialised in computer science.’’

Moe Joe said the regime sent him to Moscow in 2003 to study engineering. He was in a second batch of trainees to be sent to Russia as part of effort to eventually train 1000 personnel to run Burma’s nuclear program.

Before leaving, he was told he would be assigned to a special nuclear battalion.

‘‘You don’t need 1000 people in the fuel cycle or to run a nuclear reactor,’’ said Moe Joe. ‘‘It’s obvious there is much more going on.’’

We knew Russia agreed in principle to sell Burma a small nuclear plant – a light water reactor – and to train about 300 Burmese scientists to run the site. The stated reason is for research purposes, specifically to produce medical isotopes.

In dispute is whether the Russian reactor would be large enough to be diverted to produce enriched uranium or plutonium for a nuclear weapon. Usually a heavy water reactor is needed to achieve this, but perhaps not with North Korean help. Ball and Thornton write: ‘‘As North Korea has shown with their [light water] reactor, it may be slow and more complex, but it is capable.’’

Moe Jo alleged a second, secret reactor of about the same size as the Russian plant had been built at complex called Naung Laing. He said that the army planned a plutonium reprocessing system there and that Russian experts were on site to show how it was done. Part of the Burmese army’s nuclear battalion was stationed in a local village to work on a weapon. He said that an operations area was buried in the nearby Setkhaya Mountains, a set-up including engineers, artillery and communications to act as command and control centre for the nuclear weapons program.

‘‘In the event that the testimonies of the defectors are proved, the alleged ‘secret’ reactor could be capable of being operational and producing a bomb a year, every year, after 2014,’’ write Ball and Thornton.

Claims of this type have stirred serious official concerns. The US Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, journeyed to Thailand for a regional security meeting last month and directly raised the issue. ‘‘We know that there are also growing concerns about military co-operation between North Korea and Burma, which we take very seriously,’’ she said.

The unease escalated when a North Korean freighter, the Kang Nam I, steamed towards Burma last month carrying undisclosed cargo. A South Korean intelligence expert, quoted anonymously, claimed satellite imagery showed the ship was part of clandestine nuclear transfer and also carried long-range missiles. Shadowed by the US Navy, the vessel eventually turned around and returned home.

Japanese police also recently caught a North Korean and two Japanese nationals allegedly trying to export a magnetic measuring device to Burma that could be used to develop missiles.

But it was what Clinton said during a television interview in Bangkok the next day that raised most eyebrows. For the first time, a senior White House official openly speculated on the prospect of nuclear co-operation between Burma and North Korea.

Clinton: ‘‘We worry about the transfer of nuclear technology and other dangerous weapons.’’

Question: ‘‘From North Korea, you mean?’’

Clinton: ‘‘We do, from North Korea, yes.’’

Q: ‘‘To Burma?’’

Clinton: ‘‘To Burma, yes.’’

Q: ‘‘So you’re concerned about the tie – the closer ties between North Korea and Burma?’’

Clinton: ‘‘Yes, yes.’’

But there are many doubts over how far Burma’s military regime has advanced its nuclear aspiration. Ball and Thornton say a regional security officer told them the Naung Laing operation was a decoy to distract people from the true site of the reactor.

‘‘Before it was a heavily guarded ‘no go-zone’. Now you can drive right up to the buildings. Villagers are allowed to grow crops again.’’ The security officer said the Russian-supplied reactor was located in the Myaing area.

To add to the confusion, there are doubts over the existence of the Russian reactor. ‘‘I’m sure the Russian reactor has not been built already,’’ says Mark Fitzpatrick, a senior fellow at the International Institute for Strategic Studies and a Burma watcher over most of the past decade. He will soon have a book published on nuclear plans across South-East Asia.

He sees ‘‘nothing alarming’’ in the prospective Russian deal – Russia is a signatory to the nuclear non-proliferation treaty which governs the export of civilian nuclear technology – and doubts Moscow would hide a reactor. Nor has the International Atomic Energy Agency raised questions about Burma’s nuclear ambitions.

But Fitzpatrick is sceptical about the stated reasons offered by Burma’s rulers to explain their interest in nuclear technology, whether for research or power generation.

‘‘The most logical explanation for this interest in research is a prestige factor,’’ he says. Burma wants to demonstrate a level of technology expertise and perhaps also deliberately raise doubts over its nuclear capability. Having the bomb, after all, is a power military deterrent against foreign attack.’’

Of the defectors’ claims, he says: ‘‘I’ve heard these reports and I pay attention to them, and they shouldn’t be dismissed out of hand.’’ North Korea is willing to sell anything to anyone, he says, and points to recent evidence that Pyongyang secretly sold a nuclear reactor to Syria.

Ball and Thornton add to the mystery by reporting the testimony of another defector they call Tin Min. He claimed to have worked as a bookkeeper for a tycoon closely linked to the Burmese military regime, whose company had supposedly organised nuclear contracts with Russia and North Korea. The deal with North Korea on nuclear co-operation supposedly dates back nine years, covering construction and maintenance of nuclear facilities.

‘‘Tin Min spoke excellent English and presented his reports to us with a touch of self-importance,’’ write Ball and Thornton. ‘‘Tin Min had good reason to know what it was like to feel important; before defecting, he had scaled the heights of his country’s high society and had reaped the benefits of that position.’’

Tin Min dismissed the regime’s rationale for requiring nuclear technology. ‘‘They say it’s to produce medical isotopes for health purposes in hospitals. How many hospitals in Burma have nuclear science? Burma can barely get electricity up and running. It’s a nonsense.’’

He claimed his boss once told him of the regime’s nuclear dreams. ‘‘They’re aware they cannot compete with Thailand with conventional weapons. They want to play power like North Korea. They hope to combine the nuclear and air defence missiles.’’ He said the nuclear program was known as UF6 Project and was run by the senior general Maung Aye. Ball and Thornton conclude the nuclear co-operation is based on a trade of locally refined uranium from Burma to North Korea in return for technological expertise.

Tin Min claimed his boss controlled much of the shipping in and out of Burma and could organise the transport of equipment to nuclear sites from the port at Rangoon. ‘‘He arranges for army trucks to pick up the containers of equipment from the North Korean boats that arrive in Rangoon and transport them at night by highway to the river or direct to the sites.’’

He also claimed to have paid a construction company in about 2004 to build a tunnel in a mountain at Naung Laing wide enough for two large trucks to pass each other.

But his story cannot be further tested. Tin Min died late last year.

There are obvious dangers of relying on the testimony of ‘‘defectors’’. The people giving evidence may have ulterior motives, as Ball and Thornton recognise, and the regime is not shy at disseminating false information.

Andrew Selth from Griffith University, a former senior intelligence analyst and an experienced Burma watcher, remains suspicious. ‘‘Understandably,’’ he recently wrote for the Lowy Institute, ‘‘foreign officials looking at these matters are being very cautious. No one wants a repetition of the mistakes which preceded the last Iraq war, either in underestimating a country’s capabilities, or by giving too much credibility to a few untested intelligence sources.

‘‘There has always been a lot of smoke surrounding Burma’s nuclear ambitions. Over the past year or so, the amount of smoke has increased, but still no one seems to know whether or not it hides a real fire.’’

Concern is not going away, however. The most recent edition of US Foreign Policy magazine compared claims surrounding Burma’s nuclear program to 1950s leaks about Israel having a secret nuclear site in the desert. Similar doubts held for claims about India and Pakistan. All three countries have since tested the bomb.

Ball and Thornton are convinced the world must face up to some uncomfortable possibilities. ‘‘According to all the milestones identified by the defectors, Burma’s nuclear program is on schedule. It is feasible and achievable. Unfortunately, it is not as bizarre or ridiculous as many people would like to think. Burma’s regional neighbours need to watch carefully.’’

Additional reporting by Daniel Flitton