Mick Hartley

Just what the world needs. There are indications that the increasingly repressive Burmese junta is being helped in its bid to become a nuclear power by – who else? – North Korea (via).

The Obama administration, concerned that Myanmar is expanding its military relationship with North Korea, has launched an aggressive campaign to persuade Myanmar's junta to stop buying North Korean military technology, U.S. officials said.

Concerns about the relationship — which encompass the sale of small arms, missile components and technology possibly related to nuclear weapons — in part prompted the Obama administration in October to end the George W. Bush-era policy of isolating the military junta, said a senior State Department official, speaking on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the subject….

In recent months, the junta has also ramped up repression against political dissidents and ethnic groups, although it has released one aging dissident — U Tin Oo — after almost seven years in detention. Thousands of people have fled Myanmar military assaults, escaping to China, Bangladesh and Thailand, in the months after the U.S. opening. A report issued this week by the Karen Women's Organization alleged that Myanmar troops have gang-raped, killed and even crucified Karen women in an attempt to root out a 60-year-old insurgency by guerrillas from that ethnic minority….

Underlining the administration's concerns about Myanmar is a desire to avoid a repeat of events that unfolded in Syria in 2007. North Korea is thought to have helped Syria secretly build a nuclear reactor there capable of producing plutonium. The facility was reportedly only weeks or months away from being functional when Israeli warplanes bombed it in September of that year.

"The lesson here is the Syrian one," said David Albright, president of the nongovernmental Institute for Science and International Security and an expert on nuclear proliferation. "That was such a massive intelligence failure. You can't be sure that North Korea isn't doing it someplace else. The U.S. government can't afford to be blindsided again."

Myanmar is thought to have started a military relationship with North Korea in 2007. But with the passage of a U.N. Security Council resolution last June banning all weapons exports from North Korea, Myanmar has emerged "as a much bigger player than it was," the senior U.S. official said.

In a report Albright co-wrote in January, titled "Burma: A Nuclear Wannabe," he outlined the case for concern about Myanmar's relations with North Korea. First, Myanmar has signed a deal with Russia for the supply of a 10-megawatt thermal research reactor, although construction of the facility had not started as of September.

Second, although many claims from dissident groups about covert nuclear sites in Myanmar are still unverified, the report said that "there remain legitimate reasons to suspect the existence of undeclared nuclear activities in Myanmar, particularly in the context of North Korean cooperation."

More on human rights violations in Burma here and here.