Issue: ‘Myanmar’s nuclear ambition is alarming’

June 25, p. 6: Less than two months after the conclusion of President Obama’s Nuclear Security Summit in Washington, DC, a recently released documentary exposed the nuclear ambitions of Myanmar, a deeply troubled and highly repressive state in Southeast Asia.  The evidence presented in the Democratic Voice of Myanmar’s documentary, “Myanmar’s Nuclear Ambitions”, is thorough, compelling, and alarming. Although Myanmar’s pursuit of nuclear weapons has long been rumored, the DVB’s documentary contains new information from a recent defector who provided the DVB with hundreds of photographs, documents, and a view from inside the highly secretive military that should finally put to rest any doubt about Myanmar’s nuclear ambition.  The evidence includes chemical processing equipment for converting uranium compounds into forms for enrichment, reactors and bombs. Taken altogether in Myanmar’s covert program, they have but one use — nuclear weapons.  (By Robert Kelley, Jakarta).
 
Your comments:

I think this is scare-mongering. It is almost beyond belief that the regime would be doing that.
I think they are more interested in emulating Cambodia — where Hun Sen has shown you can stay in power and reap a fortune in aid without having a real democracy — than in following the path of North Korea.
Also, bad editing error, I presume by a sub, in renaming the DVB. It damages the credibility of the rest of this piece, which never really seems to go anywhere.
I don’t see what benefit this is supposed to do except for putting the generals into a more intractable situation.
Sully
Chch, NZ

There is a fatal error in the second paragraph. The DVB is the Democratic Voice of Burma, not the Democratic Voice of Myanmar. It’s the name of a news organization. Please correct that.  
P.S
Myanmar

Well, everybody denies secret nuclear programs — that’s their nature.
The more interesting question is whether “allowing yet another dictatorship to acquire the world’s most powerful weapons” is really “not an option.” Frankly, we said that about North Korea, but haven’t done much to stop Pyongyang.
My suspicion is that we might huff and puff about Burma’s nuclear program, but do little in the knowledge that it’s too primitive to get very far (at the current rate at least).
Dom Nardi
Washington, DC

Kelley seems unaware that the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has already made a formal enquiry by a letter dated June 14, 2010 and that the Myanmar authorities replied formally by letter dated 18 June. This is in addition to two formal statements of denial.
The texts of all three Myanmarese documents have been given wide publicity. I doubt though that Kelley has the political experience on Myanmar affairs needed to interpret the documents objectively.
They suggest to me that, though Myanmar may have contemplated a nuclear program, they have been dissuaded by the UN Security Council Resolutions on North Korea as well as by the Russians, the Chinese, the Indians and the US representations from proceedings, and that any intent has for the present been abandoned. Vigilance, though, remains essential.
Details of the “suspicious activity” noted by UN experts have not been made public and we can only guess what it might be.
Derek Tonkin
The UK