Nuke theory in Burma tunneling confirmed by defectors
Updated
A US non-proliferation group is calling on the International Atomic Energy Agency to investigate Burma, after fresh reports the military junta has a secret nuclear program which may be working towards a bomb. Suspicions have long existed, but have been bolstered by claims from two Burmese defectors who say they had close knowledge of the operations. One of the defectors says huge tunnels are being used to transport equipment sent from North Korea, echoing comments from Hillary Clinton last month that the two countries may be working together on nuclear development.
Professor Desmond Ball, along with freelance journalist Phil Thornton, spent two years collecting evidence from the Burmese border. It's this evidence which has put the issue back on the international security agenda.
Presenter: Liam Cochrane
Speaker: Professor Desmond Ball from the Strategic and Defence Studies Centre at the Australian National University
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BALL: Well I talked to, as you said, many defectors. The two principle ones were a civilian who had been involved in the negotiations with North Korea and who had been involved in the preparing of the Memorandum of Understanding and the actual contracting on the civilian side. On the military side Moe Jo was a junior military officer who had been in the second group of Burmese army officers to be sent for nuclear training in Moscow. After his period in Moscow he returned to Rangoon and then worked in nuclear-related areas within the army.
COCHRANE: And in fact he claimed that the Burmese military have developed a nuclear battalion. What's the role of that group of the army?
BALL: Both of the defectors had knowledge of that battalion, him [Moe Jo] more particularly because in effect he was part of that battalion. That's a group that has been setup near Mandalay to try and consider over the long term some of the specific technical and organisational issues, command-and-control issues for what to do with a nuclear device once they reach that point.
COCHRANE: And from all that you've heard are you convinced that they are working towards a nuclear weapon?
BALL: I've got no doubt whatsoever; I met with these defectors, six times with one and three or four with the other. I've got no doubt they're telling everything truthfully as they believe it, and because neither of them had never met before, they did not know of the existence of the other, but they had such similar stories or identical stories about one particular are where they allege the North Koreans are in the process of building this second reactor.
COCHRANE: Now I can sense you are approaching this with some scepticism, is there a fear that this might be part of some sort of disinformation campaign, that these defectors might have sort of been loaded with this information for people like you to collect?
BALL: I don't believe that, I've got to know them fairly well, I got to know where they're coming from. I'm also fairly familiar with the way Burmese intelligence works, I just don't think that that sort of campaign is really on the cards. No, these guys are telling it as it is. Now one qualification though to our previous discussion, it's not so much in my view Burma doing this, Burma could not do this at all by itself. This has to have very substantial North Korean involvement in the technical and construction side if indeed they're to build a bomb as you asked.
COCHRANE: Specifically what are the North Koreans helping the Burmese with?
BALL: Well it does seem that they're involved in pretty much all elements of the fuel cycle, from the uranium mining through to the refining and processing, they have basically built a second refinery from which they take the yellow cake [a uranium concentrate], and then the allegations of the defectors are that they have in addition to the publicly known Russian reactor that Burma's getting, that they have supplied, or are in the process of supplying, a second reactor similar to the one that they have in Yongbyon in itself. And that they're following that up with a plutonium reprocessing capability. In other words it would give Burma and/or North Korea basically a complete fuel cycle all the way to production of a nuclear device.
