BANGKOK - Is Myanmar truly trying to acquire a nuclear weapons capability and
produce ballistic missiles with North Korean assistance, as alleged in a
controversial June documentary made by the Norway-based Democratic Voice of
Burma (DVB) and aired by al-Jazeera, or is it all poppycock, as claimed in a
November 12 report by United States-based ProPublica, an award-winning US
investigative journalism outfit?
The DVB report was based on testimonies from Myanmar army defectors who had
been scrutinized by Robert Kelley, a highly regarded former US weapons
scientist and former United Nations weapons inspector. ProPublica, on the other
hand, quoted an anonymous senior "American official" as saying that the US
Central Intelligence Agency had reviewed Kelley's report "line by
line and had rejected its findings".
Classified cables recently released by WikiLeaks from the US Embassy in Yangon,
however, reveal a wide discrepancy between what US officials have said in
public and the concerns they raise internally about Myanmar's nuclear
ambitions. Judging by these leaked documents, it appears that ProPublica has
fallen victim to manipulations by US officials who want to hide the true extent
of the intelligence that US agencies have collected in order to enhance the
political agenda of those who favor engagement over further isolation of
Myanmar's military regime.
The US currently imposes economic and financial sanctions against the
rights-abusing regime. Long before the Barack Obama administration launched its
new Myanmar policy and began sending emissaries to talk with the generals,
other US officials had tested a similar conciliatory tack. By any measure,
those diplomatic efforts completely failed. In February 1994, US congressman
Bill Richardson, who later served as the US's ambassador to the United Nations,
paid a highly publicized visit to the country.
Accompanied by a New York Times correspondent, he met with pro-democracy leader
Aung San Suu Kyi - then under house arrest - as well as then intelligence chief
General Khin Nyunt. At the time, Richardson's visit was hailed in the press as
a major "breakthrough" - although he himself was very cautious in his remarks.
After a second visit to Myanmar in May 1995, Richardson stated at a press
conference in Bangkok that his trip had been "unsuccessful, frustrating and
disappointing".
Similarly, a string of UN special envoys have for over two decades attempted
and failed to engage the generals towards political change and national
reconciliation. Myanmar's partners in the 10-member Association of Southeast
Asian Nations (ASEAN) have also long advocated a policy of "constructive
engagement" with the military regime, though so far with few tangible results
apart from increased trade and investment with the impoverished nation.
The WikiLeaks cables and other internal US documentation show that Washington
is indeed concerned by reports of North Korea's shadowy involvement in Myanmar
as well as the military regime's nuclear ambitions. Comparing the content of
the recently leaked cables with what US officials and other sources apparently
told ProPublica shows that expressing such concerns publicly would make it more
difficult to entice Myanmar's ruling generals to give up their newly
established, cozy relationship with North Korea's weapons-proliferating regime.
Myanmar's close relations with North Korea's main ally, China, is also a
concern, according to US senator James Webb, a staunch advocate of the US's new
and to date ineffectual engagement policy with Myanmar's military government.
At a breakfast meeting with Washington defense reporters in October, Webb
called on the Obama administration to be more active in Myanmar and engage the
country's military junta to prevent China from making Myanmar a full-blown
client state.
Downplaying perennial human-rights concerns and dismissing the well-documented
reports of Myanmar's nuclear ambitions are part and parcel of this new policy
departure. From the afore-mentioned breakfast meeting, Foreign Policy magazine
reported on its web site on October 27 that Webb "criticized what he sees as a
double standard in the administration's approach toward human rights - and
pointed to Beijing". "When was the last time China had an election? How many
political prisoners are there in China? Does anybody know? What's the
consistency here?" Foreign Policy reported. Tellingly, the November 12
ProPublica report quoted Webb as saying that the DVB report on North Korea and
Myanmar's nuclear ambitions "made such an [engagement] approach impossible".
Difficult truths
The US Embassy in Yangon stated in a report dated August 27, 2004 - which has
recently been made public by WikiLeaks - that one of their sources had said
that North Korean workers were assembling surface-to-air missiles at a
"military site in Magway Division" where a "concrete-reinforced underground
facility" was also being constructed. An unidentified expatriate businessman
had told the US Embassy that "he had seen a large barge carrying reinforced
steel bar of a diameter that suggested a project larger than a factory".
While stating that these reports could not be "definitive proof of sizable
North Korean involvement with the Burmese [Myanmar] regime... many details
provided by [a confidential source] match those provided by other, seemingly
unrelated sources". According to those reports, the embassy stated in its
report, Myanmar and North Korea "are up to something of a covert military or
military-industrial nature".
The report added that, "exactly what, and on what scale, remains to be
determined" and that the embassy would continue to "monitor these developments
and report as warranted". Asia Times Online reported as early as July 2006 (see
Myanmar and North Korea share a tunnel vision, July 19, '06) on North
Korea's involvement in the construction of an extensive underground complex in
and around Myanmar's new capital Naypyidaw.
In another internal US document made public by WikiLeaks, a local Myanmar
businessman reportedly offered uranium to the US Embassy in Yangon. The offer
was not linked to any North Korean activity, but nevertheless added to the
mystery and speculation surrounding nuclear issues in Myanmar. The embassy
reportedly bought it and wrote in its cable to Washington: "The individual
provided a small bottle half-filled with metallic powder and a photocopied
certificate of testing from a Chinese university dated 1992 as verification of
the radioactive nature of the powder."
The unnamed businessman also said that "if the US was not interested in
purchasing the uranium, he and his associates would try to sell it to other
countries, beginning with Thailand". It was unclear where the alleged uranium
came from, but Myanmar is known to have several deposits of the radioactive
metal used in nuclear reactors and weapons. According to a Myanmar government
web site, there are uranium ore deposits at five locations in the country,
namely: Magway, Taungdwingyi (south of Bagan), Kyaukphygon and Paongpyin near
the ruby mines at Mogok, Kyauksin, and near Myeik (or Mergui) in the country's
southeast.
Perhaps even more revealingly, according to an August 2009 report from US
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to the US Embassy in Berlin marked
"confidential" (but not included in the documents released by WikiLeaks),
ambassador Susan Burk, special representative of the US president for nuclear
non-proliferation, discussed "concerns about Myanmar's nuclear intentions" in a
meeting with German officials.
The DVB documentary mentioned the involvement of German companies in Myanmar's
alleged weapons of mass destruction programs. But, in ProPublica's version of
events, the only noteworthy event related to Germany was that "officials" had
said "they were aware that Burma had bought the equipment shown in the [Myanmar
army] defector's pictures [some of it was exported by German companies], but
have concluded that it is not being used to launch an atomic weapons program."
Furthermore, a UN report released in November alleged North Korea is supplying
banned nuclear and ballistic missile equipment to Myanmar, among other
countries. "China had blocked publication of the report which has been ready
for six months," the French news agency Agence France-Presse reported on
November 13. According to the report, drafted by experts who answer to the UN
Security Council's sanctions committee, North Korea is involved with "the
surreptitious transfer of nuclear-related and ballistic missile-related
equipment, know-how and technology to countries including Iran, Syria and
Myanmar".
The UN report went on to state that suspicious nuclear activities in Myanmar
were linked to Namchongang Trading, a state-owned North Korean company known to
have been involved in nuclear activities in Iran and Syria and the arrests of
three people in Japan who tried to export illegally a magnetometer to Myanmar
through Malaysia. In reference to the disclosures by the UN experts, the
Washington Times reported on November 10: "Magnetometers can be used to produce
ring magnets, a key element in centrifuges that are the basis of nuclear arms
programs in Iran and Pakistan. That transfer was linked to a North Korean
company involved in ‘illicit procurement' for nuclear and military programs."
In 2009, Namchongang and its director, Yun Ho-jin, were formally sanctioned by
the UN for proliferation activities. According to a German Customs Bureau
report, the company uses its offices in Beijing and Shenyang in China to place
orders for the equipment, which is critical to building the centrifuges
required to enrich uranium. The arrival of Namchongang Trading in Myanmar set
off alarm bells in many Western capitals and convinced several previous
skeptics of Myanmar's nuclear ambitions to take the recent reports more
seriously.
At the same time, US officials continue to deny that such concerns exist, as
was reflected in ProPublica's November report that cited a supposed Central
Intelligence Agency assessment of the threat. ProPublica did not reply to
e-mailed questions from Asia Times Online about its November 12 piece. But, if
their source's intention was to appease the Myanmar regime, it clearly
succeeded. On December 5, the state-owned daily newspaper Kyaymon (The Mirror)
ran a full translation of the ProPublica report that trashed the DVB
documentary and nuclear expert Kelley's assessment.
That response would seem to demonstrate that Myanmar's secretive military
regime is still in denial about its true intentions: it has repeatedly stated
that it has no nuclear ambitions and that there are no North Korean technicians
situated in the country. Meanwhile, Myanmar's government has yet to publicly
react to the recently leaked internal US documents disseminated by WikiLeaks.
However, it is now clear that there is one version of US perceptions about
Myanmar's nuclear ambitions crafted for public consumption and diplomatic
effect, and quite another making the rounds among Washington's security
establishment. The recent disclosures of the latter cast the US's recent
engagement efforts towards Myanmar in a new strategic light and raise hard
questions about the policy's wisdom and sustainability.
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.
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