• by Marwaan Macan-Markar (bangkok)
• Wednesday, July 21, 2010
• Inter Press Service

Thanks to a loophole in the international regime to control the proliferation of nuclear weapons, military-ruled Burma could very well carry out its reported intent to go nuclear behind a veil of secrecy, free of scrutiny from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).

That is the privilege the South-east Asian nation enjoys under the Small Quantities Protocol it signed with the Vienna-based IAEA in April 1995, three years after Burma, also known as Myanmar, became party to the Nuclear Non- Proliferation Treaty (NPT).

This protocol allows parties to the treaty, which seeks to build a global nuclear non-proliferation regime, to have up to 10 tonnes of natural uranium and 2.2 pounds of plutonium without having to report such possessions to the IAEA.

This means also that countries like Burma do not have to open their doors to IAEA inspection teams and can avoid disclosing details about new nuclear facilities until six months before these start operations.

It is of little wonder, then, why a former IAEA director is urging Burma to clear the air about its reported nuclear plans by becoming a party to the Additional Protocol of the NPT, which gives the IAEA more powers to inspect nuclear activity in a country.

'They have nothing to lose if they have nothing to hide,' Robert Kelly, a recently retired director of the IAEA, told IPS in an exclusive interview. 'It is a protocol that countries have volunteered to be a party to. Chad just became the 100th member of the Additional Protocol.'

Burma’s silence on this front, along with its denials of violating its commitment to the NPT, 'is very strange; it is very suspicious,' added Kelly, a nuclear engineer, during the telephone interview from Vienna. 'They are exploiting a loophole in the Small Quantities Protocol and getting away (with it).'

Kelly, a U.S. national who has participated in IAEA nuclear weapons inspections in Iraq, Libya and South Africa, has been drawn into controversy in the wake of reports that Burma intends to become the first nuclear power in South-east Asia. In June, Kelly gave an independent assessment of the findings made by the Democratic Voice of Burma (DVB), an Oslo-based station run by Burmese journalists in exile, which exposed Burma’s nuclear ambitions.

'There is clear evidence that there is a place where steps are being taken towards building a nuclear programme,' Kelly said of the evidence he had reviewed from the DVB report, including that pertaining chemical processing equipment to convert uranium compounds into forms for enrichment. 'But there is no sign of a weapons programme yet.'

The DVB’s revelations of Burma’s nuclear dream have been confirmed within U.S. intelligence circles, Kelly revealed. 'It was not something new for them. They had known such facilities existed for at least five years.'

The DVB report also confirmed what many Burma watchers had suspected for nearly a decade -- that the junta, which rules the country with an iron grip through the use of its 450,000-strong military, had bigger ambitions. Its suspected nuclear trail, in fact, cut across many countries.

In early 2002, for instance, media reports emerged about Suleiman Asad and Muhammed Ali Mukhtar, two Pakistani nuclear scientists who had worked in two of that Burma’s secret nuclear installations.

In 2007, Russia and Burma signed an agreement to build a nuclear research centre, including facilities for radioisotope production, a silicon doping system and a nuclear-waste treatment and burial facility. This deal with Rosatom, Russia’s atomic energy agency, came on the heels of the nuclear training that close to 1,000 Burmese scientists and technicians have received in Russia since 2001.

Signs of closer cooperation between Burma and North Korea also emerged over the past decade, with the countries re-establishing diplomatic ties in 2007. Such ties -- and reports by the exiled Burmese media that a senior Burmese general was taken on a weapons inspection tour to North Korea in late 2008 -- come even as Pyongyang faces international pressure and U.N.- backed sanctions for its own nuclear weapons programme.

Even Germany and Singapore find themselves named in the Burmese nuclear trail. 'A German company sold equipment through its Singapore subsidiary for Burma’s current nuclear programme,' said Kelly. 'They were good machine tools to make chemical compounds.'

Yet such details hardly surface when Burma attends the annual sessions of the IAEA’s general conference. Tin Win, the head of Burma’s delegation at last September’s sessions, painted a picture of a country supporting the NPT’s aims for a 'nuclear weapon-free world.'

'Myanmar currently has no major nuclear facility,' Tin Win told the 53rd annual meeting of the IAEA. 'For the world to be peaceful and secure, it is important that states do not misuse their peaceful nuclear programmes for nuclear weapons purpose.'

Apart from living up to those words at the next IAEA sessions, Burma’s junta will also have to meet its obligations as a member of the Association of South-east Asian Nations (ASEAN), which has its own nuclear non- proliferation regime.

Foreign ministers of the 10-nation ASEAN, which also includes Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam, underscored the importance of the South-east Asian Nuclear- Weapon Free Zone at their annual meeting in Hanoi this week.

The agreement on the zone came into force in 1997, and Burma is a party to it. At a regional nuclear weapons monitoring commission this week, ASEAN ministers made a case for strengthening its role toward complete nuclear disarmament, stated the Vietnamese foreign ministry.

© Inter Press Service (2010) — All Rights Reserved. Original source: Inter Press Service

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