Washington Post:
A batch of leaked U.S. diplomatic cables released this week lend details to long-suspected nuclear cooperation between North Korea and Burma, suggesting that hundreds of North Koreans were at one point working at a covert military site deep in the Burmese jungle.
The cables from the U.S. Embassy in Rangoon, released Thursday by anti-secrecy Web site WikiLeaks, are hardly definitive, citing accounts from dockworkers, foreign businessmen and other observers. But they feed growing fears of a partnership between two of the world's most opaque countries, with cash-strapped North Korea selling its nuclear technology - which now includes a capacity for uranium enrichment - despite United Nations sanctions designed to clamp down on exactly that.
Suspicions have swirled for several years about Burma's nuclear ambitions. As non-proliferation analysts see it, those ambitions would probably draw on help from Pyongyang. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton has warned of possible nuclear cooperation between North Korea and Burma, also known as Myanmar.
One August 2004 memo cited information from a Burmese officer who claimed that 300 North Koreans were assembling surface-to-air missiles at a secret construction site, in a town called Mimbu. The workers, too, were "constructing a concrete-reinforced underground facility that is '500 feet from the top of the cave to the top of the hill above.' "
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The Obama administration has eased its diplomatic isolation of Burma's ruling military junta, seeking a hand in dissuading the purchase of North Korean technology. Meantime, a recent U.N. report - compiled by a panel of experts monitoring the sanctions against Pyongyang - concludes that North Korea is exporting nuclear technology to Iran, Syria and Burma, often using an elaborate network of shell companies and intermediaries.
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It is hard to say who Burma would want to nuke. Their biggest fear seems to come from within, and they have not needed weapons of mass destruction to keep the lid on so far. Perhaps the program is to feed the egos of some rather weird military leaders who are suffering from acute paranoia.
Image via Wikipedia
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