Distant nuclear future not for lack of ambition

No.12 - 5/2007
30 May 2007
Politics
 
Distant nuclear future not for lack of ambition
 
A Russia-returnee officer, speaking by phone from Mandalay where he is on furlough, confirms prevalent reports on Burma's efforts to acquire nuclear weapons are not just "fairy tales" concocted by anti-junta exiles.
 
"The two old guys (Generals Than Shwe and Maung Aye) know practically nothing about the complications involved," he said. "It's U Thaung (Minister of Science and Technology) who's masterminding everything."

^{U Thaung}

The officer claims the generals had "caught the nuclear bug" following the bloody confrontations between Thailand and Burma in the years 2001 and 2002. "It was so galling to have been outgunned by a country that they had once conquered with troops armed mostly with wayindoke (bamboo staffs) that they felt they had to do something to even the score."
 
Subsequent purchase of MiG 29s from Russia was only fulfilling part of the plan to overhaul Burma's armed forces, according to him." Their way of thinking is that if they have decided on a course of action, they have to go all the way no matter what. Hence, the nuclear option," he explained.
 
Thailand has for some time received reports of the Burma Army's plan to acquire nuclear weapons by 2020, a senior Burma watcher told SHAN recently.
 
Moscow announced on 15 May that it had closed a deal with Burma to build a 10 MW nuclear reactor. Burma is known to have rich uranium deposits.
 
According to Reuters, 8 February, East West Institute study says terrorists are finding it easier to get nuclear bomb as the necessary materials and know-how become easier to acquire. Alvin Toffler, in his bestseller War and Anti-War, also quotes Michael Golay, a professor of nuclear engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, saying, "What's classified today is how to build a good weapon, not how to build a weapon."