Is Myanmar joining nuclear club with North Korea aid?

By Bill Tarrant - Analysis

SINGAPORE (Reuters) - A spate of reports that North Korea may be helping fellow pariah state Myanmar join the nuclear club has underlined concerns over Pyongyang's proliferation activities since it renounced disarmament talks and tested a bomb.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton highlighted the issue at a regional security meeting in Thailand last month, saying she was worried about possible nuclear transfers to Myanmar -- though stopping short of saying any had taken place. Indian authorities have detained a North Korean ship and are searching it for radioactive material, the first case of a ship being detained and searched under U.N. sanctions adopted in June following North Korea's atomic test the month before.

The MV Mu San dropped anchor off the Andaman islands last Wednesday without permission and was detained by the coastguard after a chase lasting several hours. Indian officials said they were trying to determine if Myanmar had been on its route.

"With increasing reports of North Korea helping Myanmar build a nuclear reactor, any vessel floating in Indian waters without a possible reason will be checked and India is rightly concerned," said Naresh Chandra, a former envoy to Washington.

A nuclear-armed Myanmar, which lies between Asia's two nuclear powers India and China, poses a major proliferation risk in the region, particularly among its Southeast Asian neighbors, who have proclaimed the region a nuclear weapons-free zone.

SECRET NUCLEAR PLANT

The Sydney Morning Herald reported recently that North Korea is helping Myanmar build a secret nuclear reactor and plutonium extraction plant in a drive to build an atomic bomb by 2014.

The "secret plant" is supposedly hidden inside a mountain at Naung Laing in northern Myanmar and runs parallel to a research reactor that Russia has agreed to help build at another site, the Herald said, citing evidence from defectors.

The research reactor, groundbreaking for which is scheduled in January, has not yet come under the inspection regime of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).

The agency asked the former Burma two years ago to host an IAEA team, following initial reports of its reactor deal with Russia, one knowledgeable official said, but the junta has yet to respond.

One of the defectors in the Herald's report, a former army officer, told Australian National University professor Desmond Ball that he was trained in a 1,000-man "nuclear battalion" and Myanmar had provided yellowcake uranium to North Korea and Iran.

The defectors also said North Korean had helped build tunnels that could be used to hide secret nuclear facilities. Some analysts believe, however, that the junta, which has expressed fears of a U.S. attack, could be building tunnels as elaborate air raid shelters.

Trevor Wilson, a former Australian ambassador to Myanmar now at Australian National University, says he is skeptical about the Herald report, noting defectors are notoriously unreliable.

"I wasn't entirely convinced the evidence they were citing was pointing to a nuclear weapons program. It could have been a nuclear power program," he told Reuters.

"There's plenty of evidence of a military relationship and also a suggestion over a long period that the Burmese army is interested in acquiring missiles from a country like North Korea, but not necessarily a nuclear-armed missile."