BANGKOK, June 7 (UPI) -- Myanmar's military dictatorship is working on nuclear weapons, a report by a Norway human rights and democracy group claims.
The evidence from Myanmar, formerly called Burma, is analyzed in a 30-page report by a former director of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Robert Kelley, and published on the Web site of the non-profit Democratic Voice of Burma.
Myanmar is likely mining uranium and exploring nuclear technology that is "useful only for weapons," Kelley said in his report that focuses largely on evidence from one man, former Myanmar Maj. Sai Thein Win.
Kelley, an American nuclear scientist, has worked for five years with DVB putting together the report based on documents and hundreds of photographs from Win, a defense engineer who studied nuclear and chemical technology at the Moscow Institute of Engineering Physics and the Mendeleev Institute of Chemical Technology.
Win later worked in Myanmar factories where he was part of a team making prototype components for missiles, DVB said on its Web site.
"Sai contacted DVB after learning of its investigation into Burma's military programs and supplied various documents and color photographs of the equipment built inside the factories," DVB said.
"The investigation has also uncovered evidence of North Korean involvement in the development of Burmese missiles, as well as Russia's training of Burmese nuclear technicians."
The report said that Win is a "remarkable individual" who "came out to Thailand to tell the world what he has seen and what he was asked to do." Win "can describe the special demonstrations he attended and can name the people and places associated with the Burmese nuclear program."
DVB said that Win is supplying nuclear information in the same fashion as did Mordechai Vanunu, an Israeli technician at the Dimona nuclear site in the Negev desert. Vanunu took photographs of activities in Israel that allegedly related to nuclear fuel and weapons development. The photos were published in the Sunday Times newspaper in London in 1986.
Vanunu was abducted, tried in an Israeli court and sentenced to 18 years in prison for divulging state secrets.
Two companies in Singapore with German connections sold machine tools to the Myanmar government's Department of Technical and Vocational Education.
"DTVE is probably a front for military purchasing for weapons of mass destruction; that is to say nuclear, chemical and biological weapons and the means to deliver them, largely missiles," the report said.
Win provided high-quality photos of German technicians installing the equipment and the Germans were suspicious that the machinery was for educational use because there were no schools or colleges in the area.
Kelley said the quality of the machine parts and the mechanical drawings were "poor" and "nothing we have seen suggests Burma will be successful with materials and components."
Kelley also said that if Myanmar was discovered to have a nuclear development program it should face international sanctions.
Myanmar having nuclear weapons would pose a proliferation risk in the region that lies between the nuclear powers of India and China. Many of their Southeast Asia neighbors have proclaimed the region a nuclear weapons-free zone.
Last summer an article in the Australian newspaper The Sydney Morning Herald reported that North Korea was helping Myanmar build a nuclear reactor and plutonium extraction plant as part of a program to build an atomic bomb by 2014.
Evidence from Myanmar defectors said the plant was inside a mountain at Naung Laing in northern Myanmar and close to a research reactor Russia agreed to help build at another site, the Herald said.
Last August U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton voiced concern over Myanmar's suspected nuclear ambitions at a regional security meeting in Thailand.
Indian authorities had recently detained a North Korean ship and searched it for radioactive material. The MV Mu San dropped anchor off the Andaman Islands without permission and was believed destined for Myanmar.
Most of the Andaman Islands, between India and Myanmar, are part of the Andaman and Nicobar Islands Union Territory of India while a small number of the archipelago islands belong to Myanmar.
The search of the ship was done under U.N. sanctions adopted in June 2009 after North Korea's atomic test the month before.
