Taunggyi Time

The upside-down world of Hun Sen and Thaksin

2009-10-27T02:24:00.001-07:00

http://www.bangkokpost.com/opinion/opinion/158231/the-upside-down-world-of-hun-sen-and-thaksin

* Published: 27/10/2009 at 09:21 AM
* Newspaper section: News

The Thai government prepared to fend off a "red shirt" army at the Association of Southeast Asian Nations summit, mounting security measures designed to prevent a repetition of the embarrassing scenes that disrupted a similar Asean meeting in Pattaya.

This time, the red shirts behaved well, unlike Cambodia's prime minister, Hun Sen, who called the fugitive former Thai prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra his "eternal friend" and compared him to Burma's Nobel Peace Prize laureate, Aung San Suu Kyi.

Hun Sen, a former Khmer Rouge commander known for his provocative remarks, said: "Many people talk about Aung San Suu Kyi in Burma, why not talk about Thaksin? That cannot be referred to as interfering."

Was Hun Sen joking? Not really. The ill-considered remark from the head of the Cambodian government illustrated the quality of leadership we have in Asean.

Hun Sen's remark was not only an insult to Th ailand but also to Burma. The Cambodian prime minister should be made fully aware that Thaksin and Mrs Suu Kyi have nothing at all in common. There are thousands of reasons for ruling out any comparison. But let's look at just a few.

Mrs Suu Kyi is dedicated to the struggle for democracy and freedom in Burma. It won't matter whether Mrs Suu Kyi becomes leader of Burma or not - today she is a symbol of change in Burma and remains a beacon of hope in spite of the attempts to belittle her by a repressive regime that has locked her up in her own home for years.

Thaksin, a billionaire telecommunications tycoon, was ousted in a bloodless coup in 2006. He skipped bail after an indictment on corruption charges and has since been living at various locations, including Nicaragua, Montenegro and the United Arab Emirates.

During his time at the head of the Thai government, the press in Thailand was muzzled and he launched a "war on drugs", which killed more than 2,000 people who, if they had been legally dealt with and convicted, would have served prison terms.

Thaksin claimed that he and his government knew the situation in Burma very well because the two countries are immediate neighbours. Here are some facts.

Thaksin was a known friend of Burma's military regime. His government courted the junta by offering loans, improving border trade and sending numerous delegations to Rangoon.

During the Asean summit in Bali, Indonesia, in 2004, Thaksin surprised many of the delegates by giving Burma his unconditional support and praising then prime minister and feared spy chief Gen Khin Nyunt's "sincerity". Philippine President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo later told journalists that Thaksin defended Burma throughout the entire summit.

While other governments in the region - and worldwide - were voicing increasing criticism of the junta and championing speedy democratic change in Burma, Thaksin was seen to be defending the generals, investing in the country and promising piecemeal progress.

Thailand was then Burma's third most important investment partner, exporting goods worth around US$1.26 billion (43 billion baht) annually.

Thaksin also had his own business interests in Burma. In 2003, Shin Corp, the telecoms company owned until recently by Thaksin's family, signed a deal with Bagan Cybertech, the internet service provider run by Ye Naing Win, son of disgraced prime minister Gen Khin Nyunt.

In 2004, Thaksin visited the ancient former Burmese capital Pagan to sell his Economic Cooperation Strategy, and promised Burma aid and support worth $45 million.

He also set his sights on what he called the "excellent prospects" of Burma's tourism industry, proposing the construction of a ski resort in Burma's northern Kachin State and the development of the unspoilt beaches of Arakan State.

The "Bangkok Process", hosted by Thaksin's government to advance democracy in Burma, fizzled out when Burmese representatives failed to turn up for a planned second session - a clear demonstration that even the Burmese generals didn't count on him.

Back home, Thaksin's administration cracked down on Burmese seeking economic and political refuge in Thailand, raising concerns about a conflict of interest and doubts about Bangkok's ability to act as an honest broker in Burma's political standoff.

Sadly, Thaksin's government, by its attitude towards Burmese migrants and refugees living in Thailand, played the nationalism card in order to boost the prime minister's popularity.

In early 2004, UN human rights envoy Hina Jilani visited Thailand and said: "Many of the Burmese human rights defenders feel very insecure with regard to their freedom of movement inside Thailand." Not surprisingly, Ms Jilani received a cool reception in Bangkok.

Just before the 2006 coup, Thaksin stayed in his heavily-guarded home for a day because of a bomb threat, likening the experience to Mrs Suu Kyi's enforced house detention.

He said he sympathised with Mrs Suu Kyi. What, for not being able to go shopping for a day?

So, once and for all, let's make it clear to Hun Sen that Thaksin is no Suu Kyi.

Mrs Suu Kyi may have her shortcomings, but she has sacrificed much in her fight for democratic change in Burma. Her sacrifices include separation from her family and her enforced absence from the funeral of her beloved husband Michael Aris, who died of cancer in 1999 in London.

The fiasco caused by Hun Sen's remarks at the Asean summit should have been an embarrassment to the Burmese delegation and Prime Minister Gen Thein Sein, who told his Japanese counterpart that the military regime would consider relaxing Mrs Suu Kyi's house arrest terms, if she "maintains a good attitude".

Thein Sein's cynicism matches that of his boss, junta leader Snr Gen Than Shwe, who said in a letter published after Mrs Suu Kyi's farcical trial in August that if she behaved "well" at her Inya Lake home under the restrictions imposed on her, she would be granted amnesty before her suspended sentence expired.

Astonishingly, Singapore's foreign ministry reacted positively to Than Shwe's gesture, saying that while it was disappointed at the guilty verdict it was nonetheless "happy that the Myanmar government has exercised its sovereign prerogative to grant amnesty by halving her [Mrs Suu Kyi's] sentence and that she will be placed under house arrest rather than imprisoned".

The world must be upside down, if not flat.

What does Than Shwe mean, for instance, by requiring Mrs Suu Kyi to behave well under house arrest? Did Mrs Suu Kyi mismanage the economy and lead the resource-rich country into poverty?

Did Mrs Suu Kyi order the troops to kill Buddhist monks and activists on the streets or throw them into prison? Did Mrs Suu Kyi order soldiers to kill or rape ethnic minorities?

At least, Hun Sen and Thein Sein can be credited with livening up the Asean summit, even though the grouping has no shortage of clowns.

Aung Zaw is founder and editor of the Irrawaddy magazine. http://www.irrawaddy.org

The upside-down world of Hun Sen and Thaksin

2009-10-27T02:24:00.000-07:00

ေရြးေကာက္ပြဲဥပေဒထြက္ၿပီးမွ ပါတီဖဲြ႔ရန္ ပီအဲန္အို ဆံုးျဖတ္

2009-10-20T05:53:00.000-07:00

ခြန္ေအာင္ျမတ္။
ေအာက္တိုဘာလ ၂၀ ရက္၊ ၂၀၀၉ ခုႏွစ္။
သတင္းႏွင့္မီဒီယာကြန္ယက္

အပစ္ရပ္အဖြဲ႕ျဖစ္သည့္ ပအုိ၀္းအမ်ဳိးသားအဖြဲ႕ခ်ဳပ္(ပီအဲန္အို)သည္ ပါတီဖဲြ႕စည္းၿပီး ၂၀၁၀ ေရြးေကာက္ပြဲကို ၀င္ မည္၊ မ၀င္မည္ကို ေရြးေကာက္ပြဲ ဥပေဒ ထြက္ၿပီးမွသာ ဆံုးျဖတ္မည္ဟု ပီအဲန္အိုအဖဲြ႕မွ ဗဟိုေကာ္မတီ၀င္တဦးက ေျပာဆုိသည္။

“က်ေနာ္တုိ႔ကေတာ့ ေရြးေကာက္ပဲြ ဥပေဒေတြ ပါတီဖဲြ႕စည္းပံုစည္းမ်ဥ္းဥပေဒေတြ ထြက္လာၿပီးမွပဲ က် ေနာ္တုိ႔ ဆံုးျဖတ္မွာပဲခင္ဗ်။ ေနာက္ၿပီးေတာ့ ဥပေဒကလည္း မထြက္ေသးဘူး။ ဘာမွ မေၾကညာေသး ေတာ့ အဲဒီေၾကညာခ်က္ကိုပဲ က်ေနာ္တုိ႔ ေစာင့္ေနပါတယ္။” ဟု ပီအဲန္အိုအဖဲြ႕မွ ဗဟိုေကာ္မတီ၀င္တဦးက ေျပာသည္။

ျမန္မာစစ္အစိုးရ အတည္ျပဳလိုက္သည့္ ၂၀၀၈ ခုႏွစ္ ဖြဲ႕စည္းပံု အေျခခံဥေပဒႏွင့္ လာမည့္ ၂၀၁၀ ေရြးေကာက္ ပြဲအေပၚ သေဘာထားႏွင့္ပတ္သက္၍ ပီအဲန္အို၏ အမည္မေဖာ္လိုသူ ၎အရာရွိက ယခုလို ဆက္ေျပာသည္။

“ညီလာခံလည္း အစအဆံုးတက္ၿပီးၿပီေလ။ က်ေနာ္တို႕ေခါင္းေဆာင္ပိုင္းေတြေပါ့ေနာ္။ ညီလာခံ လည္း အစအဆံုး က်ေနာ္တို႕တက္ေရာက္ၿပီးမွ ေရးဆြဲတဲ့အခ်ိန္မွာလည္း ၂၀၀၈ ရဲ႕ အေျခခံ ဥပေဒကေတာ့ ဒါ ကေတာ့ က်ေနာ့္တို႕လည္း ႏုိင္ငံေတာ္ကလည္း အတည္ျပဳၿပီးသားဆိုေတာ့ က်ေနာ္တို႕လည္း ေထာက္ခံ ၿပီးသားပါ ခင္ဗ်ား။ ၂၀၁၀ က်ေတာ့ ဒါေတာ့ က်ေနာ္တို႕လည္း ေျပာလို႕ေတာ့ မရေသးဘူးေလေနာ္။ ေကာင္းလိမ့္မယ္လို႕ေတာ့ က်ေနာ္တို႕ေတာ့ ထင္ပါတယ္။”

ပီအဲန္အိုက ျပည္သူ႕စစ္အဖြဲ႕ ဖြဲ႕စည္းရန္အတြက္ သေဘာတူညီထားၿပီး စစ္အစိုးရထံ စာရင္းတင္ျပထားသည္ဟု ဆိုသည္။

၂၀၀၈ ခုႏွစ္ ဖြဲ႕စည္းပံုအေျခခံဥပေဒထဲတြင္ ပအုိ၀္းေဒသကို ကိုယ္ပုိင္အုပ္ခ်ဳပ္ခြင့္ရေဒသ အျဖစ္ ပါရွိသည္။

ထုိင္းႏုိင္ငံအေျခစိုက္ ပအုိ၀္းျပည္သူ႕ လြတ္ေျမာက္ေရး အဖြဲ႕ ဥကၠဌ ဗိုလ္မွဴးႀကီး ခြန္ဥကၠာက ပီအဲန္အိုအဖဲြ႕၏ ရပ္ တည္ခ်က္အေပၚတြင္ ယခုလုိ ေျပာသည္။

“ေရြးေကာက္ပြဲ ဥပေဒမရွိေသးပဲနဲ႕ေတာ့ ဆံုးျဖတ္ဖို႕ခက္ေနတာကိုး။ မွန္တယ္သူေျပာတာ။ ေရြးေကာက္ ပြဲ ဥပေဒက အမ်ဳိးအစားသတ္မွတ္တာေတြရွိတယ္ေလ။အမ်ဳိးအစားသတ္မွတ္တာေတြရွိတယ္။ ေနာက္ ၿပီး ေတာ့ ပါတီဘယ္လိုပံုစံဖြဲ႕ရမယ္ဆိုတာ ရွိတယ္။ စည္းကမ္းခ်က္ေတြေပါ့။ စည္းကမ္းခ်က္ေတြရွိေတာ့ အဲဒီစည္းကမ္းခ်က္ကို လုိက္ႏုိင္မွ ၀င္တာေကာင္းတာေပါ့။ မလုိက္ႏုိင္ဘူးဆိုရင္ခက္တယ္။ အဲဒါက မွန္ တယ္။ ဒါေၾကာင့္ ေရြးေကာက္ပြဲ ဥပေဒမရွိေသးပဲနဲ႕ ေရြးေကာက္ပြဲအေပၚမွာ အကဲျဖတ္ဖို႕ ခက္တယ္ ေလ။ အဲဒီလို ဆံုးျဖတ္တာကေတာ့ က်ေနာ္ကေတာ့ ဒါ သင့္ေတာ္တယ္လို႕ယူဆတယ္။”

သို႕ေသာ္ ပီအဲန္အိုအေနႏွင့္ ထူးျခားသည့္ အခြင့္အေရးႏွင့္ ႏုိင္ငံေရးအာဏာ ရရွိရန္ မျဖစ္ႏုိင္ ေၾကာင္း ဗိုလ္မွဴးႀကီး ခြန္ဥကၠာက ေျပာသည္။

“ေရြးေကာက္ပြဲ၀င္သည္ျဖစ္ေစ၊ ဖြဲ႕စည္းပံုေအာက္မွာ ေနသည္ျဖစ္ေစ သူတို႕အေနနဲ႕ေတာ့ ဘာမွေတာ့ ပို ၿပီးေတာ့ ထူးလာဖို႕ေတာ့ မရွိဘူး။ ဒါေပမယ့္ မ၀င္ရင္ေတာ့ နစ္နာဖို႕ေတာ့ ရွိႏုိင္တယ္။ ဒါေၾကာင့္ မ၀င္လို႕ရွိရင္ နစ္နာႏုိင္တဲ့ဟာကို ကာကြယ္တဲ့အေနနဲ႕ ၀င္ပါ့မယ္၊ ပါပါ့မယ္လို႕ ေျပာတာပဲ ျဖစ္ႏုိင္မယ္။ နစ္နာမႈ မရွိေစခ်င္လို႕ေပါ့။ ပိုရလာဖို႕ အေၾကာင္းေတာ့ မရွိဘူးလို႕ ထင္တယ္။”

ပီအဲန္အိုသည္ ၁၉၉၁ ခုႏွစ္တြင္ စစ္အစိုးရႏွင့္ အပစ္ရပ္စဲခဲ့သည္။

အပစ္ရပ္ၿပီးေနာက္တြင္ မိုင္းရွဴးေက်ာက္မ်က္ တူးေဖာ္ေရး၊ ကခ်င္ျပည္နယ္ ဖားကန္႕ ပတၱျမားနဂါး ေက်ာက္ စိမ္းလုပ္ငန္း၊ ေရႊေမွာ္တူးေဖာ္ေရးလုပ္ငန္းႏွင့့္ တျခား စီးပြားေရး လုပ္ပိုင္ ခြင့္မ်ားကို ရရွိခဲ့သည့္ အဖြဲ႕ျဖစ္သည္။

ကုိးကန္႔အေရး နဲ႔ စစ္အစုိးရ လွည့္ကြက္ (ပအုိ၀္း ျပည္သူ႔လြတ္ေျမာက္ေရးအဖြဲ႕ဥကၠဌ ဗုိလ္မွဴးခြန္ဥကၠာႏွင့္ VOA မွ ေမးျမန္းခ်က္)

2009-10-20T00:00:00.000-07:00

06 September 2009 (VOA)

မၾကာေသးခင္ကပဲ စစ္အစုိးရတပ္မ်ားရဲ ႔ ေခ်မႈန္းျခင္းကုိ ခံလုိက္ရတဲ့ ဖုန္ၾကားရွင္ ဦးေဆာင္တဲ့ MMDAA (Myanmar National Democratic Alliance Army) ကုိးကန္႔တပ္ဖြဲ႔ေတြဟာ အနီးအနားမွာရွိတဲ့ တျခားအပစ္ရပ္အဖြဲ႔ေတြျဖစ္တဲ့ UWSA (United Wa State Army) 'ဝ' တပ္ဖြဲ႔၊ မုန္လာတပ္ဖြဲ႔၊ SSA (Shan State Army) သွ်မ္းျပည္တပ္မေတာ္ (ေျမာက္ပုိင္း) စတဲ့ အဖြဲ႔ေတြနဲ႔ PDF (Peace and Democracy Front) လုိ႔ ေခၚတဲ့ ၿငိမ္းခ်မ္းေရးနဲ႔ ဒီမုိကေရစီ မဟာမိတ္အဖြဲ႔ကုိ ဖြဲ႔စည္း ထားခဲ့ ပါတယ္။ မဟာမိတ္ သေဘာတူညီခ်က္အရ အဖြဲ႔တဖြဲ႔ကုိ ျပည္ပရန္သူက ထိပါးလာရင္ က်န္တဲ့အဖြဲ႔ေတြက ဝုိင္းၿပီး ကာကြယ္ ေပးရမယ္ ဆုိေပမဲ့ အခု ေလာေလာဆယ္ အခ်ိန္အထိေတာ့ ဖုန္ၾကားရွင္ နဲ႔ တပ္ဖြဲ႔ဝင္တခ်ဳိ ႔ကုိ UWSA 'ဝ' နယ္ေျမထဲမွာ ခုိလႈံခြင့္ေပးထားတာကလြဲလုိ႔ တျခားတစုံတရာ ထိေရာက္တဲ့ ကူညီရုိင္းပင္းမႈေတြကုိ မေတြ႔ရေသးပါဘူး။ ျမန္မာျပည္ အေရွ႕ ေတာင္ပုိင္း ထုိင္းနယ္စပ္ဘက္မွာ ဖြဲ႔စည္းထားတဲ့ NDF (National Democratic Front) လုိ႔ ေခၚတဲ့ လက္နက္ကုိင္ တုိင္းရင္းသားေတြရဲ ႔ အမ်ဳိးသားဒီမုိကရက္တစ္ တပ္ဦး မဟာမိတ္အဖြဲ႔ရဲ ႔ အတြင္းေရးမႈးေဟာင္းျဖစ္ၿပီး အခုလက္ရွိ စစ္ေရး တာဝန္ခံတဦးျဖစ္တဲ့ ပအုိ၀္း ျပည္သူ႔လြတ္ေျမာက္ေရးအဖြဲ႕ (PPLO - PaO People's Liberation Organization) ေခါင္းေဆာင္ ဗုိလ္မႈးႀကီး ခြန္ဥကၠာ, ကုိ ဗီြအုိေအျမန္မာသတင္း ဌာနမႈး ဦးသန္းလြင္ထြန္း က ဆက္သြယ္ေမးျမန္း တင္ျပ ထားပါတယ္။

ဗုိလ္မႉးႀကီးခြန္ဥကၠာ ။ ။ ပထမအခ်က္အေနနဲ႔ေတာ့ ေျမာက္ပုိင္းမွာရွိတဲ့ အပစ္ရပ္အဖြဲ႔ေတြ ဖြဲ႔ထားတဲ့ လုံၿခံဳေရး၊ စစ္ေရး မဟာမိတ္သေဘာကေတာ့ စစ္ေရးအရ က်ဴးေက်ာ္တုိက္ခုိက္လာရင္ စုေပါင္း ခုခံ ကာကြယ္ဖို႔ ျဖစ္တယ္၊ အေျခခံ အျဖစ္ ေတာ့ ႏုိင္ငံေရးအေျခခံနဲ႔ ျဖစ္ပါတယ္။ သုိ႔ေသာ္ နအဖ တကယ္ က်ဴးေက်ာ္တဲ့အခါက်ေတာ့ စစ္ေရးေသာ္လည္းေကာင္း၊ ႏုိင္ငံေရးေသာ္လည္းေကာင္း မေျပာဘဲနဲ႔ ရာဇဝတ္ေၾကာင္း ရဲ အေရးယူပုိင္တဲ့ ျပစ္မႈေတြ ရွိတယ္။ ဒါေၾကာင့္ ရာဇဝတ္ ေၾကာင္း၊ တရားဥပေဒေၾကာင္းနဲ႔ ျပၿပီးေတာ့ ရဲ ရဲ ႔ လုပ္နည္းလုပ္ထုံးအရ ဝင္လာၿပီးေတာ့ အဲဒီအေပၚမွာ တပ္ေပါင္းစု က လည္း ခုခံ ကာကြယ္ဖုိ႔ ဥပေဒကုိ ေလးစားလုိက္နာရမယ္ဆုိရင္ ဒါကလုပ္လုိ႔မရေတာ့ဘူး သေဘာမ်ဳိး ျဖစ္လာတဲ့အခါ က်ေတာ့ အခြင့္ေကာင္း ယူၿပီးေတာ့ နအဖက ဝင္ေရာက္လာတာျဖစ္တယ္လို႔ က်ေနာ္ သုံးသပ္တယ္။

ဦးသန္းလြင္ထြန္း ။ ။ ဒါေပမဲ့လည္း ဒီအထဲမွာ ဥပမာအားျဖင့္ တဘက္နဲ႔တဘက္ အရင္စ ပစ္ခတ္မႈေတြ မလုပ္ဘူးဆုိတဲ့ သေဘာတူညီခ်က္ေတြ တခ်ဳိ ႔ရွိတာမုိ႔လည္း ေသခ်ာသတ္မွတ္ထားတဲ့ မရွင္းလင္း တဲ့ အခ်က္ေတြ ရွိတာေၾကာင့္လည္း ဝ, တပ္ဖြဲ႔ေတြအေနနဲ႔ ကူညီႏုိင္မႈမရွိတာလုိ႔ ၾကားသိရတယ္။ အဲဒါနဲ႔ ပတ္သက္လုိ႔ ေျပာျပေပးပါ။

ဗုိလ္မႉးႀကီးခြန္ဥကၠာ ။ ။ အဲဒါလည္း မွန္ပါတယ္။ နအဖ က ဝင္လာၿပီးေတာ့ စစ္ေရးအရ က်ဴးေက်ာ္တယ္၊ စစ္ေရးအရ တုိက္ခုိက္တယ္ဆုိရင္ေတာ့ ခ်က္ခ်င္းခုခံၾကမွာပဲ။ သုိ႔ေသာ္ အခုဝင္လာတာက စစ္ေရးမပါဘူး၊ ရဲေတြက ရာဇဝတ္ေၾကာင္း အရ စစ္ေဆးမယ္၊ ရဲေတြကေနၿပီးေတာ့ သမၼာန္စာထုတ္ၿပီးေတာ့ တရားခံလုိ႔ယူဆရတဲ့လူေတြကုိ ဆင့္ေခၚမယ္။ အဲဒီပုံစံနဲ႔ ဝင္လာတဲ့အခါက်ေတာ့ ဒီအလွည့္အေျပာင္းတခုကုိ ေျမာက္ပုိင္းၿငိမ္းခ်မ္းေရးအဖြဲ႔က နားမလည္တဲ့အခါက်ေတာ့ ဒါကုိ လွည့္ကြက္ လုပ္ၿပီးေတာ့ နအဖ က အင္အားကုိ သုံးလာတာ ျဖစ္တယ္။ အဲဒီအေပၚမွာ သူမပစ္ရင္ ကုိယ္က စ မပစ္ဘူးလုိ႔ ေျပာေပမဲ့့ ရဲ လုပ္ပိုင္ခြင့္အရ ဝင္ၿပီး နယ္ေျမသိမ္းပုိက္ၿပီးေတာ့ အင္အားသုံးတဲ့အခါက်ေတာ့ အဲဒီမွာ သူတုိ႔ ရႈံးသြားတာလုိ႔ က်ေနာ္တုိ႔ အကဲခတ္ႏုိင္တယ္။

ဦးသန္လြင္ထြန္း ။ ။ ဒီေနရာမွာ ရဲလုိ႔ဆုိေပမဲ့လည္း တခ်ဳိ ႔ အကဲခတ္ေတြရဲ ႔ အဆုိရကေတာ့ ဒီ နယ္ေျမထဲမွာ မူလအစက ျမန္မာႏုိင္ငံက ရဲတပ္ဖြဲ႔ဝင္ေတြ ဒီေလာက္အထိ မရွိခဲ့ဘူးလုိ႔ ဆုိပါတယ္။ အထူးသျဖင့္ ဖုန္ၾကားရွင္ ရဲ ႔ ေနအိမ္ကုိ ဝင္စီးတဲ့ ေနရာမွာ ျမန္မာစစ္တပ္က စစ္သားေတြကုိ ရဲ အသြင္ေျပာင္းၿပီး ရဲ ယူနီေဖာင္း ဝတ္ၿပီးေတာ့ ဝင္စီးခုိင္းတယ္လုိ႔ စြပ္စြဲမႈေတြ ရွိေနပါတယ္။ အဲဒါနဲ႔ ပတ္သက္လုိ႔ ဦးခြန္ဥကၠာတုိ႔ ဘာၾကားသလဲ။

ဗုိလ္မႉးႀကီးခြန္ဥကၠာ ။ ။ ဟုတ္ကဲ့ အဲဒါေတာ့ က်ေနာ္လည္း သိပါတယ္။ ၾကားလည္းၾကားပါတယ္။ နအဖ က တကယ့္ ရည္မွန္းခ်က္အစစ္ ကေတာ့ နယ္ေျမထိန္းခ်ဳပ္ဖုိ႔၊ လက္နက္အင္အားသုံးၿပီးေတာ့ ဝင္ဖုိ႔ ပါ။ ဒါေပမဲ့ အဲဒါကုိ အေပၚယံ ဖုံးတဲ့ အေနနဲ႔ ရာဇဝတ္ေၾကာင္းျဖစ္တယ္၊ ဥပေဒေၾကာင္း ျဖစ္တယ္ဆုိတဲ့ဟာ၊ ေဒၚေအာင္ဆန္းစုၾကည္ ကုိ အေရးယူတဲ့ သေဘာ မ်ဳိးေပါ့။ ဒါ လူ႔အခြင့္အေရး မဟုတ္ဘူး၊ ရာဇဝတ္မႈ ျဖစ္တယ္၊ ဥပေဒကိစၥျဖစ္တယ္ဆုိတဲ့ ဖုံးကြယ္ၿပီးေတာ့ ကုိးကန္႔ကုိ ဝင္တာ ျဖစ္တယ္။ ဒါေၾကာင့္ ဒီလုိ ဖုံးကြယ္ဝင္တဲ့ေနရာမွာ အလိမ္အလွည့္ကုိ ခံရၿပီးေတာ့ ဒီ ေျမာက္ပုိင္း အင္အားစုေတြက နည္းနည္း အခက္အခဲျဖစ္သြားခဲ့တယ္။ တဘက္ကလည္း တရုတ္ျပည္က နယ္စပ္ကပ္ေနေတာ့ တရုတ္ျပည္ ရဲ ႔ အႀကံေပး ခ်က္ ေတြ၊ ရွင္းရွင္းေျပာရရင္ေတာ့ လႊမ္းမုိးမႈေတြကုိလည္း အဲဒီက အဖြဲ႔အစည္းေတြက နာခံရမယ္ျဖစ္ေတာ့ ဘယ္လုိပဲ လွည့္လွည့္ တုိ႔ကုိထိရင္ မခံဘူးဆုိၿပီး ဝုိင္းတုိက္ၾကမယ္လုိ႔ ေျပာရင္လည္း တရုတ္ျပည္ကေတာ့ ဆူဆူပူပူ မလုပ္ၾကပါနဲ႔ ကခ်င္လည္း ေနပါ၊ ဝ လည္းေနပါ၊ ကုိးကန္႔ျပႆနာကေတာ့ က်ေနာ္တုိ႔ ၾကားထဲမွာ ၾကည့္ရွင္းေပးမယ္ ဆုိၿပီးေတာ့ တရုတ္ ကုိယ္တုိင္ ၀င္ဟန္႔တားလုိ႔ရွိရင္ေတာ့ ဒီ မဟာမိတ္ေတြ ကတိကဝတ္နဲ႔ ကူညီရမယ့္ ကိစၥမွာ နည္းနည္းေတာ့ အဟန္႔အတား ျဖစ္သြားႏုိင္တယ္လုိ႔ က်ေနာ္သုံးသပ္ပါတယ္။

ဦးသန္းလြင္ထြန္း ။ ။ အစပုိင္းမွာ စြပ္စြဲခ်က္က ဦးဖုန္ၾကားရွင္ရဲ ႔ ေနအိမ္အတြင္းမွာ လက္နက္စက္ရုံရွိတယ္၊ လက္နက္ေတြ ထုတ္လုပ္ေနတယ္၊ တရားမဝင္ လက္နက္ေတြ သုိေလွာင္ထားတယ္ဆုိၿပီးေတာ့ စြပ္စြဲထားတာရွိတယ္။ ဒါေပမဲ့လည္း တကယ္တမ္းက်ေတာ့ ဒီ ကုိးကန္႔အဖြဲ႔ကုိယ္တုိင္ကလည္း လက္နက္ကုိင္အဖြဲ႔အစည္းတခု အေနနဲ႔ သူရဲ ႔ ရွိေနတဲ့ လက္နက္ ေတြကုိ ျပဳျပင္ဖုိ႔ မြမ္းမံဖုိ႔ ထုတ္လုပ္ဖုိ႔ အထူးသျဖင့္ စက္ရုံေတြ ျပဳျပင္မြမ္းမံေရးလုပ္ငန္းေတြ ထားပုိင္ခြင့္ မရွိဘူးလား။

ဗုိလ္မႉးႀကီးခြန္ဥကၠာ ။ ။ တကယ္ေတာ့ ဒီကိစၥေတြ ဒီလုိျဖစ္တယ္ဆုိတာ နအဖ သိျပီးသားပါ။ သူတုိ႔ အႏွစ္ (၂၀) လုံးလုံး ၿငိမ္းခ်မ္းေရး ပထမဦးဆုံးရတဲ့ အဖြဲ႔အေနနဲ႔ ဦးစားေပးၿပီးေတာ့ လုပ္ခ်င္တာလုပ္ ေနခ်င္သလုိေန ထားၿပီးသားပါ။ သုိ႔ေသာ္ အခုလက္ရွိ အေျခအေနက်မွ တစုံတရာ ၂၀၁၀ ေရြးေကာက္ပြဲကုိ ကာတဲ့အေနနဲ႔ ဒီလုိ မနာခံတဲ့ အမိန္႔မနာခံတဲ့ အပစ္ရပ္ ေတြကုိ ဆုံးမမယ့္အျပင္ ဦးဖုန္ၾကားရွင္ အဖြဲ႔ကေတာ့ တစ္၊ ကုိးကန္႔ဆုိတဲ့ နယ္ေျမအရ လူမ်ဳိးစုက တရုတ္ မ်ဳိးႏြယ္စုေတြ ျဖစ္ေတာ့ အမ်ဳိးသားေရးရႈ ႔ေထာင့္ကေန ၾကည့္ရင္ အေပ်ာ့ဆုံးျဖစ္တယ္။ ေနာက္ ႏုိင္ငံေရး ခံယူခ်က္ဘက္က ၾကည့္ရင္ လည္း အေပ်ာ့ဆုံးျဖစ္တယ္။ အင္အားဘက္က ၾကည့္ရင္လည္း အေပ်ာ့ဆုံးျဖစ္တယ္။ ဒါေၾကာင့္ အေပ်ာ့ဆုံးေနရာကုိ အရင္ ႏိႈက္တဲ့သေဘာမ်ဳိးနဲ႔ နအဖ က ထုိးစစ္ဆင္တယ္လုိ႔ က်ေနာ္ေျပာႏုိင္တယ္။

ဦးသန္းလြင္ထြန္း ။ ။ ဟုတ္ကဲ့ အခုေနာက္ဆုံး ဒီ ဗမာသတင္းစာေတြရဲ ႔ ေျပာၾကားခ်က္အရဆုိရင္ အေစာပုိင္းကေတာ့ ဒါ တရားမဝင္ လက္နက္စက္ရုံ ရွိတယ္ဆုိၿပီးေတာ့ စြပ္စြဲထားတာမ်ဳိးပဲ က်ေနာ္တုိ႔ၾကားရတယ္။ ဒါေပမဲ့ အခုတဆင့္ တက္လာ တာ က ဦးဖုန္ၾကားရွင္ က မႈးယစ္ေဆးဝါးလုပ္ငန္းေတြ ပတ္သက္ေနပါတယ္ဆုိၿပီးေတာ့ အခု ပထမဦးဆုံး ထူးထူးျခားျခား ျပန္ၿပီး စြပ္စြဲလာတာကုိ ေတြ႔ရတယ္။ တကယ္တမ္းက်ေတာ့ ဦးဖုန္ၾကားရွင္ ဟာ ျပင္ပႏုိင္ငံေရး ေလ့လာသူ ေတြ နဲ႔ ျပင္ပ ေစာင့္ၾကည့္ေနသူေတြရဲ ႔ သိရွိထားတာက သူက မူးယစ္ေဆးဝါးမွာ ပတ္သက္ေနတယ္ဆုိၿပီး နယူးေယာ့ (New York) တရားရုံးက သူကုိ ဆင့္ေခၚထားျခင္း ခံေနရသူ တဦးျဖစ္တယ္။ ဒါေပမဲ့လည္း အဲဒါကုိ တခ်ိန္လုံး ျမန္မာစစ္အစုိးရက ျငင္းပယ္ေနခဲ့ၿပီး အထူးသျဖင့္ ၂၀၀၅ ခုႏွစ္က ဦးဖုန္ၾကားရွင္ နဲ႔ ေပါင္းၿပီးေတာ့ ဒီ ကုိးကန္႔နယ္ေျမမွာ ပထမဦးဆုံး မူးယစ္ ေဆး ကင္းလြတ္တဲ့ နယ္ေျမအျဖစ္ တရားဝင္ေၾကညာထားခဲ့ၿပီးမွ အခုမွ သူတုိ႔ ဘာလုိ ဒီလုိ စြပ္စြဲမႈေတြ ထပ္လုပ္လာတာ လဲ။ တျခား အဲဒီ ေဒသအတြင္းမွာ အဖြဲ႔အစည္းေတြျဖစ္တဲ့ အထူးသျဖင့္ UWSA, ဝ အဖြဲ႔လုိ အဖြဲ႔အစည္း ေတြလည္း ဒီလုိမ်ဳိး ရာဇဝတ္ေၾကာင္းေတြနဲ႔ စြပ္စြဲလာစရာေတြ မရွိႏုိင္ဘူးလား။

ဗုိလ္မႉးႀကီးခြန္ဥကၠာ ။ ။ ေသခ်ာေပါက္ေပါ့ဗ်ာ။ ရာဇဝတ္မႈနဲ႔ စြပ္စြဲႏုိင္တဲ့အေၾကာင္းေတြက အမ်ားႀကီးပါ။ အဲဒီ ေျမာက္ပုိင္း အဖြဲ႔ေတြ မေျပာခင္မွာ က်ေနာ္တုိ႔ ေတာင္ပုိင္းမွာရွိတဲ့ ပအုိဝ္းအနီလုိ႔ ေခၚတဲ့ ရလဖ ကို ၾကည့္လုိက္။ အင္အား မရွိပါဘူး။ သူတုိ႔ ေလးငါးရာ။ သုိ႔ေသာ္လည္းပဲဲ ရလဖ ကုိ အခြင့္အေရးေပးၿပီးေတာ့ တကယ္တမ္း ခ်ဳပ္ကုိင္ေတာ့မယ့္ အခါက်ေတာ့ ရလဖ အထဲက အဲဒီ မႈးယစ္ေဆးဝါးအမႈ၊ အမႈတခုခုေပါ့ ရာဇဝတ္မႈ မကင္းေသာအမႈေတြကုိ ကုိင္တြယ္ၿပီးေတာ့ ဖမ္းဆီး ေထာင္ခ်၊ ျဖဳတ္ပစ္တဲ့ ဟာ အမ်ားႀကီးေပၚလာတယ္။ ေပၚတဲ့အခါက်ေတာ့ အဲဒီ ၿခိမ္းေျခာက္မႈအေပၚမွာ ရလဖ မွာ ေလးစု ေလးဖြဲ႔ ကြဲၿပီးေတာ့ တခါတည္း ပုံပ်က္ပန္းပ်က္ ျဖစ္သြားတယ္။ အခုဆုိရင္ မရွိေတာ့ဘူး။ အဲဒီ ပုံစံမ်ဳိးက အခု ကိုးကန္႔ကုိ သြားျပန္သုံးတယ္လုိ႔ က်ေနာ္တုိ႔ ေတြ႔ရတယ္။ ကိုးကန္႔မွာလည္း တကယ္ေတာ့ ဒီ ဖုန္ အမ်ဳိးအႏြယ္ အုပ္စု နဲ႔ ရန္ မ်ဳိးႏြယ္ စုတုိ႔က ၾကာပါၿပီ။ ကုိးကန္႔ရဲ ႔ သမိုင္းေၾကာင္းအရ။ အဲဒါကုိ ညီညီၫႊတ္ၫႊတ္ ဘက္တဘက္က ျဖစ္တယ္ တဘက္က ညီညီၫႊတ္ၫႊတ္နဲ႔ ျပန္ေနၾကတယ္။ ဒါကုိ ျပန္ အစေဖာ္ၿပီးေတာ့ နအဖ က ရန္ အုပ္စုကုိ ေျမႇာက္ေပးၿပီးေတာ့ တုိ႔က အာဏာ သိမ္းတဲ့ဘက္ လုိက္မယ္ဆုိၿပီးေတာ့ ခုတုံးလုပ္လုိ္က္တဲ့အေပၚမွာ ကုိးကန္႔ရဲ ႔ ပထမဦးဆုံး အုပ္စု အကြဲအၿပဲ ကုိ ခုတုံး လုပ္ တယ္။ ဒုတိယကေတာ့ မူလ အႏွစ္ (၂၀) လုံးလုံး ခြင့္ျပဳၿပီးေတာ့ မျမင္ေယာင္ေဆာင္ေနတဲ့ လုပ္ငန္းေတြကုိ အခုမွ ရာဇဝတ္ မႈ ေျမာက္တယ္၊ ရဲ အေရးယူပုိင္ခြင့္ရွိတယ္။ ဒါ ျပည္ထဲေရးဌာနရဲ ႔ လုပ္ငန္းဆုိၿပီးေတာ့ ျပည္ထဲေရးဌာနရဲ ႔ ဒု တာဝန္ခံ ကုိယ္စားလွယ္ တရုတ္ကုိ သြားၿပီးေတာ့ အေရးဆုိ္တဲ့ဟာကေတာ့ နအဖရဲ ႔ တမ်ဳိးတဖုံလွည့္လုိက္တဲ့ လွည့္ကြက္လုိ႔ ေျပာႏုိင္ တာေပါ့။

ဦးသန္းလြင္ထြန္း ။ ။ အထူးသျဖင့္ မႈးယစ္ေဆးဝါးနဲ႔ ပတ္သက္တဲ့ ရာဇဝတ္အမႈေတြဟာ ျပင္ပကမာၻ႔ႏုိင္ငံေတြရဲ ႔ စြပ္စြဲမႈ ေတြ အရဆုိရင္ ျမန္မာစစ္အစုိးရကလည္း တနည္းတဖုံနဲ႔ မ်က္ႏွာလႊဲထားတဲ့သေဘာမ်ဳိး၊ အားေပးအားေျမွာက္ လုပ္ထားတဲ့ သေဘာမ်ဳိး ပုံစံမ်ဳိးေတြပါ ရွိေနတာဆုိေတာ့ အခုလုိ တဘက္ကုိ လက္ၫိုဳးထုိးလာရင္ တဘက္ကလည္း ျမန္မာစစ္အစုိးရ ေခါင္းေဆာင္ပုိင္းတခ်ဳိ ႔ရဲ ႔ ပါဝင္ပတ္သက္လာမႈေတြကုိ ေဖာ္ထုတ္လာမွာကုိေရာ သူတုိ႔ အေနနဲ႔ စုိးရိမ္မႈမရွိဘူးလား။

ဗုိလ္မႉးႀကီးခြန္ဥကၠာ ။ ။ အဲဒါလည္း ပါေကာင္းပါႏုိင္တာေပါ့။ ဒါေပမဲ့ ဒီ ဗမာအစုိးရေခၚေခၚ နအဖ အစုိးရေခၚေခၚ ဒီပုဂၢိဳလ္ ေတြက အပစ္ရပ္ေခါင္းေဆာင္ေတြ အဖြဲ႔အစည္းေတြက လုပ္ပုိင္ခြင့္ရွိတဲ့လူေတြကုိ သူတုိ႔က မက္လုံးေပးၿပီးေတာ့ စီးပြားေရး ေတြလုပ္၊ မူးယစ္ေဆးဝါးပဲ လုပ္လုပ္၊ မတရား မေတာ္မတရား ရာဇဝတ္မႈ မကင္းတဲ့အလုပ္ပဲလုပ္လုပ္ ၾကည့္ထားတယ္။ မွတ္တမ္းယူထားတယ္။ တေန႔တခ်ိန္မွာ လက္နက္သဖြယ္ အသုံးျပဳၿပီးေတာ့ ဒီလူေတြကို ျပန္ၿပီးေတာ့ ရုိက္ခ်ဳိးဖုိ႔၊ ႏွိပ္ကြပ္ဖုိ႔ အျပည္ျပည္ဆုိင္ရာရဲ ႔ အျမင္သေဘာထားမွာ တရားနည္းလမ္းက်တယ္ဆုိတဲ့ အျမင္ကုိ ကုိင္ဖုိ႔ သူတုိ႔က ျပင္ထား တာေပါ့။ ဒါေၾကာင့္ အခုလို နအဖ က စနစ္တက် စုေဆာင္းၿပီးေတာ့ အခ်ိန္က်လာတဲ့အခါက်ေတာ့ ျပင္ဆင္ထားတဲ့အတုိင္း ကုိင္တြယ္ တဲ့ အခါက်ေတာ့ ရာဇဝတ္မႈေတြ ျဖစ္လာတယ္။ ဒါကုိ က်ေနာ္တုိ႔ တုိင္းရင္းသားေခါင္းေဆာင္ေတြက ပထမ အခြင့္အေရး ရတုန္း ေမ်ာၿပီးေတာ့ ယူခဲ့လုိက္ခဲ့ပါခဲ့တဲ့ဟာကုိ သူတုိ႔က ျပန္ကုိင္တဲ့သေဘာမ်ဳိးျဖစ္တယ္။ ဒါကေတာ့ နည္း ပရိယာယ္ ေကာင္းေကာင္းနဲ႔ အျမစ္ျဖဳတ္မယ့္ စနစ္လုိ႔ ေျပာလုိ႔ရပါတယ္။

ဦးသန္းလြင္ထြန္း ။ ။ ဒါဆုိလုိ႔ရွိရင္ အခု ေျမာက္ပုိင္းက မဟာမိတ္အဖြဲ႔ရဲ ႔ အေျခအေနအေၾကာင္းကုိ ျပန္ေမးရမယ္လုိ႔ဆုိရင္ ဒီ မဟာမိတ္အဖြဲ႔အေနနဲ႔ ဝ နယ္ထဲမွာ ဖုန္ၾကားရွင္တုိ႔ကုိ လက္ခံထားတာကုိ ဟုတ္ပါတယ္။ ဒါေပမဲ့လည္း အခု ကုိးကန္႔ နယ္ေျမမွာ ပိုင္ေဆာက္ခ်ိန္တုိ႔ ဦးေဆာင္တဲ့ ဗဟုိေကာ္မတီအသစ္လည္း ေပၚလာၿပီးဆုိေတာ့ ဒီ မဟာမိတ္အဖြဲ႔အေနနဲ႔ ကုိးကန္႔နယ္ထဲမွာ အသစ္ေပၚလာတဲ့အဖြဲ႔အစည္းကုိ အသိအမွတ္ျပဳၿပီး ျပန္ၿပီးေတာ့ သူတို႔ ဆက္ဆံသြားဖုိ႔ အလားအလာ ရွိလား။ ဒီ မဟာမိတ္အဖြဲ႔ရဲ ႔ ေနာက္ပုိင္းအလားအလာက ဘယ္လုိရွိသလဲ။

ဗုိလ္မႉးႀကီးခြန္ဥကၠာ ။ ။ က်ေနာ္ထင္တယ္ အခု အသစ္ေပၚတဲ့အဖြဲ႔က ရုပ္ေသးျဖစ္တယ္။ ရုပ္ေသးသေဘာေဆာင္တဲ့ အခါ က်ေတာ့ သူမွာ ဘာမွ မွန္ကန္တဲ့ လုပ္ပုိင္ခြင့္ မရွိဘဲနဲ႔ ေလာက္ကုိင္အေျခစုိက္ ဒကသ ကပဲ သူ႔ကို ကုိင္ထားၿပီးေတာ့ ေျပာခ်င္တာခုိင္းခ်င္တာ ခုိင္းၿပီး ကုိးကန္႔လူမ်ဳိးကုိလည္း ကုိယ္စားျပဳမွာ မဟုတ္သလုိ၊ တုိင္းရင္းသားေတြရဲ ႔ အခြင့္အေရး ကုိလည္း ကုိယ္စားျပဳမွာ မဟုတ္ဘူး။ မဟုတ္တဲ့အခါက်ေတာ့ ဒီ တကယ့္တုိင္းရင္းသားအခြင့္အေရး၊ ျပည္နယ္အခြင့္အေရး ေတြ ကုိယ္ပုိင္အခြင့္အေရးေတြ သုိ႔တည္းမဟုတ္ ျပည္ေထာင္စု တကယ္တည္ေဆာက္ခ်င္တဲ့လူေတြ အတြက္ကေတာ့ အခု ကုိးကန္႔မွာရွိတဲ့ ရုပ္ေသး... နအဖတပ္ေတြက ခန္႔ထားတဲ့လူေတြကုိေတာ့ (က်ေနာ္ ထင္တယ္) အယုံအၾကည္ရွိမွာ မဟုတ္ ဘူး။ အသိအမွတ္ျပဳမယ္လုိ႔ေတာ့ က်ေနာ္မထင္ဘူး။ အခု နအဖ ဖြဲ႔ေပးတဲ့ ကုိးကန္႔အဖြဲ႔ က ဥပမာေပးရင္ေတာ့ ေကအန္ယူ ကေန ခြဲထြက္သြားခဲ့တဲ့ ဒီေကဘီေအ ပံုပဲ ျဖစ္လာမယ္။ ကုိးကန္႔အခ်င္းခ်င္းကုိ တုိက္ဖုိ႔ခုိက္ဖုိ႔ ေသဖုိ႔ေက်ဖုိ႔ လုပ္ထားတဲ့ နအဖ ရဲ ႔ စီမံခ်က္ ျဖစ္တယ္။

Civilians warned not to leak tunnel information

2009-10-19T10:44:00.001-07:00

Oct 19, 2009 (DVB)–Locals in a town in central Burma say they have been warned by government troops not to leak news about a tunnel being built by the military or their villages will be razed.

The 19-mile long tunnel is being built between the villages of Ywarmon and Phatthantaung in Magwe division, according to a local in the nearby town of Natmauk.

“Now even the village authorities are too scared to talk about it,” he said. “Security is really tight in the area and taking photos is also prohibited.”

Another local in Magwe division said that four years ago the army contacted his son, a graduate of the Government Technological College, and persuaded him to work in a weapons factory being built underground in Ngaphe town near to Magwe city.

The man said that an official from the army had offered his son 35,000 kyat ($US35) per month to work on the project. “The man said he would not be able to visit home after started working in the tunnel,” he said.

In June DVB released a series of reports compiled from leaked government documents that outlined the junta’s plans to develop a network of tunnels underneath Burma that would accommodate troop battalions and armoury in the event of an invasion.

Some 800 tunnels are thought to be under construction, with sections of the project dating back as far as 1996.

The project has been clouded in secrecy, but appears to be part of a longer-term strategy to bolster Burma’s defence capabilities.

The junta is using North Korean advisors for its tunnel system, after a senior government delegation visited Pyongyang in November 2008 and took a tour round military tunnels there.

The majority of tunneling and construction equipment for the project has been bought from North Korea in a series of deals over the last three years which total at least $US9 billion, according to two purchase orders received by DVB.

The Bangladesh-based Narinjara news agency last week quoted a military source as saying that a tunnel had been dug into a mountain in Burma’s western Arakan state to store fighter jets. The tunnel is thought to be connected to a nearby air base in Ann township.

Arakan state lies alongside Burma’s border with Bangladesh, which in recent weeks has become the site of a military build-up from both sides following a dispute over ownership of gas blocks in the Bay of Bengal.
Reporting by Aye Nai

http://english.dvb.no/news.php?id=2966

ဥပေဒေပၚထြက္ၿပီးမွ ေရြးေကာက္ပြဲ၀င္ရန္ကိစၥ ပအုိ၀္းအဖြဲ႕ဆုံးျဖတ္မည္

2009-10-18T23:03:00.000-07:00

မ်ဳိးမ်ဳိးႏွင့္ ေက်ာ္သူ

ျမန္မာအစိုးရႏွင့္ အပစ္အခတ္ရပ္စဲေရး သေဘာတူညီခ်က္ ရထားသည့္ တိုင္းရင္းသားအဖြဲ႕အစည္းတစ္ခုျဖစ္ေသာ ပအို၀္းအမ်ဳိးသားအဖြဲ႕ခ်ဳပ္ (PNO) က ၎တို႔အေနျဖင့္ ႏိုင္ငံေရးပါတီဖြဲ႕စည္း ၿပီး ေရြးေကာက္ပြဲ၀င္ရန္ မဆံုးျဖတ္ရ ေသးေၾကာင္းႏွင့္ ေရြးေကာက္ပြဲဥပေဒ ထြက္ေပၚၿပီးခ်ိန္မွ ဆံုးျဖတ္ခ်က္ခ်မည္ ျဖစ္ေၾကာင္း အဆုိပါအဖြဲ႕ေခါင္းေဆာင္ ဦးေအာင္ခမ္းထီက လြန္ခဲ့သည့္သီတင္းပတ္က ရွမ္းျပည္နယ္ ေတာင္ပိုင္း ေက်ာက္တစ္လံုးေဒသ၌ ျမန္မာတိုင္း(မ္) ႏွင့္ ေတြ႕ဆံုစဥ္ ေျပာၾကားသည္။

"ေရြးေကာက္ပြဲ ဥပေဒထြက္ၿပီးမွ ကြ်န္ေတာ္တို႔ ဆံုးျဖတ္ ပါမယ္။ ေလာေလာဆယ္ ကြ်န္ေတာ္တို႔မွာ ဘာမွျပင္ ဆင္တာေတြ မရွိေသးပါဘူး။ ဒါေပမယ့္ ပါတီဖြဲ႕ဖို႔သင့္ေတာ္ မယ္ဆိုရင္ ကြ်န္ေတာ္ တို႔ ပါတီဖြဲ႕ပါမယ္"ဟု၎ကေျပာသည္။

၎က PNO အေနျဖင့္ တစ္ခုခုကို လုပ္ရန္ရွိေသာ္လည္း အစီအစဥ္ အတိ အက်မရွိေသးေၾကာင္းႏွင့္ ပါတီဖြဲ႕ပါက ႏိုင္ငံေရးပါတီသေဘာထက္ အဖြဲ႕အစည္းတစ္ခု (သို႔) အမ်ဳိးသားေရးအဖြဲ႕ အစည္းတစ္ခု အေနျဖင့္ ဖြဲ႕စည္းရန္ရွိ ေၾကာင္း ေျပာၾကားသည္။

ပါတီဖြဲ႕စည္းပါက ေတာင္ႀကီးခ႐ုိင္ ႏွင့္ လြဳိင္လင္ခ႐ုိင္တို႔တြင္ အေျခစိုက္ၿပီး အဆိုပါေဒသရွိ လူမႈစီးပြားေရး လုပ္ငန္း မ်ားကို လုပ္ကိုင္မည္ျဖစ္ေၾကာင္း ဦးေအာင္ခမ္းထီက ဆိုသည္။

"ကြ်န္ေတာ္တို႔ ေနရာတိုင္းမွာ မပါ၀င္ ခ်င္ပါဘူး။ ကြ်န္ေတာ္တို႔ ေဒသဖြံ႕ၿဖိဳးေရး အတြက္ပဲ လုပ္ကိုင္မွာပါ။ တစ္ႏိုင္ငံလံုး ရဲ႕ ႏိုင္ငံေရးမွာ ပါ၀င္ဖို႔ အိပ္မက္ေတာင္ မရွိပါဘူး"ဟုု ၎က ေျပာၾကားသည္။

PNO အဖြဲ႕သည္ ၁၉၉၁ ခုႏွစ္တြင္ ႏိုင္ငံေတာ္ႏွင့္ အပစ္အခတ္ရပ္စဲေရး သေဘာတူညီခ်က္ရရွိၿပီး ဥပေဒ ေဘာင္ အတြင္းသို႔ ၀င္ေရာက္လာသည့္ တိုင္းရင္းသားလက္နက္ကိုင္အဖြဲ႕ ျဖစ္သည္။

PNO အေနျဖင့္ လက္နက္ကိုင္ ေတာခိုရျခင္းမွာ ယခင္တစ္ပါတီစနစ္ က ရွမ္းျပည္နယ္တြင္ ကြန္ျမဴနစ္အဖြဲ႕ မ်ားႏွင့္ အျခားလက္နက္ကုိင္အဖြဲ႕မ်ားက ေဒသခံ ပအို၀္းတုိင္းရင္းသားမ်ား အား ဖမ္းဆီးျခင္းမ်ား ျပဳလုပ္ ခဲ့သျဖင့္ ပအို၀္းေဒသအား ကာကြယ္ရန္ျဖစ္ ေၾကာင္း ဦးေအာင္ခမ္းထီက ေျပာ ၾကားသည္။

ယခုအခါ နယ္ေျမၿငိမ္းခ်မ္းသြားၿပီ ျဖစ္ေသာေၾကာင့္ PNO အေနျဖင့္ အထူးေဒသ(၆) ေဒသဖြံ႕ၿဖိဳးတိုးတက္ ေရးလုပ္ငန္းမ်ားကုိသာ လုပ္ကိုင္ေနေၾကာင္း ၎က ေျပာၾကားသည္။

"၁၉၉၁ ခုႏွစ္ကေန အခု ၂၀၀၉ ခုႏွစ္အထိ ပအို၀္းေဒမွာ က်ပ္သိန္း ေပါင္း ၆,၇၇၄ သိန္းေက်ာ္ အကုန္အက် ခံခဲ့ၿပီး ေက်ာင္းေတြ၊ ေဆး႐ုံေဆးေပး ခန္းေတြ၊ လမ္းပန္းဆက္သြယ္ေရး လုပ္ငန္းေတြနဲ႔ လွ်ပ္စစ္ဓာတ္အား ရရွိ ေရးလုပ္ငန္းေတြ ေဆာင္ရြက္ခဲ့ပါတယ္" ဟု ဦးေအာင္ခမ္းထီက ေျပာသည္။

၎က အဆိုပါကုန္က်ေငြမ်ားသည္ ႏိုင္ငံေတာ္၊ PNO ႏွင့္ အျခားအလႉရွင္မ်ား၏ ထည့္၀င္ေငြမ်ား ျဖစ္ေၾကာင္း ေျပာၾကားသည္။

ဦးေအာင္ခမ္းထီ ဦးေဆာင္သည့္ PNO အဖြဲ႕သည္ အမ်ဳိးသားညီလာခံ သုိ႔ ၁၉၉၃ ခုႏွစ္မွ စတင္ကာ တက္ ေရာက္ခဲ့သည့္ တိုင္းရင္းသားအဖြဲ႕ တစ္ဖြဲ႕လည္းျဖစ္သည္။

"ကြ်န္ေတာ္က အေျခခံဥပေဒအေပၚ မွာအေကာင္းျမင္ရွိပါတယ္။ လာမယ့္ ၂၀၁၀ ေရြးေကာက္ပြဲဟာ တိုင္း ပည္ အတြက္ ထြက္ေပါက္တစ္ခုလို႔ ျမင္ပါ တယ္။ ဒီေရြးေကာက္ပြဲဟာ ကြ်န္ေတာ္ တို႔ေဒသတစ္ခုတည္း တင္မဟုတ္ဘဲ တစ္ႏိုင္ငံလံုးအတြက္ ေမွ်ာ္လင့္ခ်က္လို႔ ကြ်န္ေတာ္ျမင္ပါတယ္"ဟု အသက္ ၇၄ ႏွစ္ရွိၿပီ ျဖစ္သည့္ ဦးေအာင္ခမ္းထီက ေျပာၾကားသည္။

ယခုအခါ PNO သည္ ျပည္သူ႕စစ္ အဖြဲ႕ဖြဲ႕စည္းေရးအတြက္ ႏိုင္ငံေတာ္ထံ စာရင္းတင္ျပထားေၾကာင္း သိရသည္။

အဆိုပါ ျပည္သူ႔စစ္တြင္ PNO မွ အဖြဲ႕၀င္ဦးေရ ၁,၃၅၀ ရွိေၾကာင္းႏွင့္ ၁,၃၀၀ သည္ တပ္သားမ်ားျဖစ္ကာ က်န္ ၅၀ မွာ အရာရွိမ်ားျဖစ္သည္။

ထို႔ျပင္ ဦးေအာင္ခမ္းထီသည္ ၎တို႔ တုိင္းရင္းသားမ်ားအေနျဖင့္ ျမန္မာ ႏိုင္ငံႏွင့္ အေမရိကန္ႏိုင္ငံအၾကား သံတမန္ဆက္သြယ္မူ ျပန္လည္ထူ ေထာင္မည့္ အစီအစဥ္အား ကန္႔ကြက္ရန္မရွိေၾကာင္းကို အေမရိကန္ အထက္ လႊတ္ေတာ္အမတ္ မစၥတာဂ်င္၀က္ဘ္ အား ၎၏ ဩဂုတ္လအတြင္း ျမန္မာႏုိင္ငံသို႔ လာေရာက္ ခဲ့သည့္ ခရီးစဥ္ အတြင္း ေတြ႕ဆံုရာတြင္ ေျပာၾကားခဲ့သည္ဟု သိရသည္။

"ဂ်င္၀က္ဘ္က ကြ်န္ေတာ္တို႕ (တိုင္းရင္းသား)ေတြအေနနဲ႔ ျမန္မာနဲ႔ အေမရိကန္ သံတမန္ဆက္ဆံေရး ျပန္ ထူေထာင္မွာကို ကန္႔ကြက္စရာရွိလားလို႔ ေမးတယ္။ ကြ်န္ေတာ္က ျမန္မာနဲ႔ အေမရိကန္ ႏွစ္ႏိုင္ငံ သံအဆက္ အသြယ္ ျပန္လည္ျပဳလုပ္တာကို ႀကိဳဆိုပါတယ္လို႔ ျပန္ေျပာခဲ့တယ္"ဟု ဦးေအာင္ခမ္းထီက ေျပာၾကားသည္။

ထို႔ျပင္ ၎က PNO အေနျဖင့္ အပစ္အခတ္ရပ္စဲၿပီးေနာက္ အထူးေဒသ(၆) တြင္ ဖြံ႕ၿဖိဳးတိုးတက္မူမ်ား လုပ္ကိုင္ရန္ ႏွင့္ စီးပြားေရးလုပ္ငန္းမ်ား လုပ္ကိုင္ရန္ ႏိုင္ငံေတာ္ထံမွ အကူအညီ မ်ားရရွိခဲ့ေၾကာင္း ေျပာၾကားသည္။

"ကြ်န္ေတာ္တို႔ ေငြေၾကးအကူအညီ ေတြေရာ၊ စီးပြားေရးလုပ္ကိုင္ခြင့္ေတြပါ ရရွိခဲ့ပါတယ္။ အပစ္အခတ္ ရပ္စဲေရး သေဘာတူညီခ်က္ရၿပီး အစိုးရက က်ပ္ သိန္း ၃၀၀ ကူညီခဲ့တယ္။ အဲဒီေငြကို အင္းေလးမွာ ဟိုတယ္ေဆာက္ခဲ့တယ္။ တစ္ႏွစ္အတြင္းမွာ ကြ်န္ေတာ္တို႔ ျပန္ ဆပ္ႏိုင္ခဲ့တယ္" ဟု ၎က ေျပာသည္။

သို႔ေသာ္ ယခုႏွစ္တြင္ ခရီးသည္နည္းေသာေၾကာင့္ အင္းေလးေဒသရွိဟိုတယ္မ်ား တြက္ေျခမကိုက္ေၾကာင္း ႏွင့္ PNO ၏ မိုင္း႐ွဴးေက်ာက္မ်က္ တူးေဖာ္ေရးလုပ္ငန္းမွာ ေက်ာက္မ်က္သိုက္မ်ား တျဖည္းျဖည္း ကုန္ခန္း လာေသာေၾကာင့္ ေက်ာက္ထြက္နည္းလာေၾကာင္း ၎က ေျပာသည္။

"ဒါေပမယ့္ ေက်ာက္စိမ္းလုပ္ငန္း ကေတာ့ ေအာင္ျမင္ေနပါတယ္" ဟု ဦးေအာင္ခမ္းထီက ေျပာၾကားသည္။

http://www.myanmar.mmtimes.com/2009/news/435/n004.htm

အဂတိလုိက္စားမႈေၾကာင့္ တရားသူႀကီးမ်ား အလုပ္ျဖဳတ္ခံရ

2009-10-14T22:31:00.000-07:00

http://burmese.dvb.no/news.php?id=8710

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သုိ႔

ဒီမုိကရစ္တစ္ျမန္မာ့အသံမွ တာ၀န္ရွိသူမ်ား

ရက္စြဲ ေအာက္တုိဘာ ၁၄ ရက္၊ ၂၀၀၉ ရက္ေန႔တြင္ ဒီမုိကရစ္တစ္ျမန္မာ့အသံမွ အြန္လုိင္း ၀ပ္ဆုိဒ္ျဖစ္တဲ့ http://burmese.dvb.no/news.php?id=8710 မွ တင္ျပသည့္ "အဂတိလုိက္စားမႈေၾကာင္႔ တရားသူႀကီးမ်ား အလုပ္ျဖဳတ္ခံရ" သတင္းေခါင္းျဖင့္ ဖတ္ရွဳလုိက္ရပါတယ္။

ဒီသတင္းကို ဖတ္လုိက္ေတာ့ က်ေနာ္စိတ္မေကာင္းျဖစ္မိပါတယ္။ က်ေနာ္ ေတာင္ႀကီးကပါ၊ ဒီသတင္းတစ္ပုဒ္ထဲမွာ ပါ၀င္ေနတဲ့ တရားခံေတြကေတာ့ တရားသူႀကီး ၃ ဦး။ မူးယစ္ေဆး၀ါးတရားခံ ခြန္တလြာအပါအ၀င္ ၄ ဦး။ ခ်စ္ကမၻာ ေမြ႔ယာပုိင္ရွင္ ေဒၚခင္၀င္း၊ တုိင္းမွဴး၊ ဒု-တုိင္းမွဴး၊ ရပခ ဂ်ီ၀မ္းကေတာ္၊ မူးယစ္ေဆးအထူးတပ္ဖြဲ႔က ရဲအုပ္လွထြဍ္နဲ႔ ဒု-ရဲအုပ္ ၂ ေယာက္။ ရပခ ဒု-ဗုိလ္မွဴးႀကီးေမာင္ေမာင္ျမင့္ရဲ႕ဇနီး ေဒၚလဲ့လဲ့ဦး အားလံုး ၁၄ ေယာက္ပါ၀င္တယ္။ အဲဒီအထဲမွာ ထူးထူးဆန္းဆန္းျဖစ္တာကေတာ့ ခြန္တလြာ တေယာက္ကိုပဲ သူ႔လူမ်ိဳးအမည္ကိုပါ တပ္ၿပီးထည့္ေရးတာကို အံ့ၾသစြာေတြ႔ရပါတယ္။ က်န္တဲ့ တရားခံေတြ၊ အထူးသျဖင့္ တရားသူႀကီး ၃ ဦး၊ တုိင္းမွဴးကေတာ္နဲ႔ ေမြ႔ယာဆုိင္ပုိင္ရွင္မတုိ႔က်ေတာ့ နာမည္သာတပ္ၿပီး ၄င္းတုိ႔လူမ်ိဳးအမည္ကို ပါ၀င္ေဖၚျပျခင္းမရွိတာကို ေတြ႔ရတယ္။ ဥပမာ ဗမာလူမ်ိဳးျဖစ္တဲ့ တရားသူႀကီး၊ ကရင္လူမ်ိဳးျဖစ္တဲ့ တုိင္းမွဴးကေတာ္ (သုိ႔)ေမြ႔ယာပုိင္ရွင္စသျဖင့္။ သို႔ေသာ္ ခြန္တလြာတစ္ေယာက္တည္းကုိသာ လူမ်ိဳးနာမည္တပ္တာကုိ နားမလည္ပါ။ အဘယ္ေၾကာင့္ ဤကဲ့သုိ႔ ကဲြျပား ခြဲျခားၿပီး ေရးသားေဖၚျပခဲ့ရတာကုိ သတင္းရွဳေတာင့္ကေနျဖစ္ေစ၊ မည္ကဲ့သုိ႔ရွဳေတာင့္ကေနျဖစ္ေစ DVB မွ တာ၀န္ရွိသူေတြ (သုိ႔) သတင္းေရးသားသူ ေနာ္ေစးေဖာ တုိ႔မွ ရွင္းျပေစလုိပါတယ္။

ေလးစားမႈျဖင့္

ေတာင္ႀကီးသား

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ဤသတင္းႏွင့္ စပ္လ်ဥ္း၍ ေတာင္ႀကီးသားမွ DVB သုိ႔ ပုိ႔စာကုိ ျပန္လည္ေဖၚထားျခင္းျဖစ္သည္။

Burma's New Constitution: A Death Sentence for Ethnic Diversity

2009-10-14T02:12:00.000-07:00

By ZIPPORAH SEIN Tuesday, October 13, 2009

As Burma's rainy season draws to a close, ethnic Karen villagers in eastern Burma are bracing themselves for a new military onslaught. It is expected that this new military offensive will be much larger than the one in June, which forced around 6,000 people to flee for their lives.

We already have strong indications that the new offensive will take place in Dooplaya and Mutraw (Papun) districts, as attacks have been going on there throughout the rainy season. Until three years ago, the Burmese government’s army mostly ceased operations during the rainy season, but now civilians get no respite.

So, why this new urgency to escalate attacks? The reason is the same as why the number of political prisoners has doubled in the past two years. It is the same reason why Aung San Suu Kyi was put on trial and her detention extended, and why the dictatorship has broken cease-fire agreements and demanded cease-fire groups place their soldiers under the control of the regime’s army. All opposition and ethnic groups must be crushed in the run up to elections in 2010.

The elections bring in a new Constitution that legalizes dictatorship through a civilian front and a rubber-stamp Parliaments to do its bidding. For Burma's generals this Constitution is a way of securing their rule.

Despite having been lied to so many times before, the international community seems to be falling into their trap. Many countries have been making the mistake of focusing on the process of the elections, whether they can be free and fair, or at least create some political space.

How short their memories are, when only last year we saw the disgusting spectacle of a referendum on the Constitution while millions went without food and shelter following cyclone Nargis. No political space was created by the referendum.

Those trying to organize a No vote were harassed, arrested or beaten. The rigged referendum delivered an unbelievable result of "92 percent" in favor. Yet despite all evidence to the contrary, some still argue the 2010 elections could create a new political space.

While attention has been on the elections, little attention has been paid to the Constitution. Even those few countries which do focus on the Constitution have mostly focused on how it is undemocratic, granting 25 percent of the seats to the military and giving the military wide veto power over any change.

Attention has also rightly been drawn to other provisions in the Constitution, such as the head of state having to come from the military, 400,000 monks being denied the vote and the failure to repeal any of the existing repressive laws.

No one seems to pay much attention to what this Constitution will mean for ethnic people. The 2008 Constitution is a death sentence for ethnic diversity in Burma. Military appointed commanders will control ethnic areas. There is no level of autonomy.

Our cultures and traditions are given no protection. We will be given no rights to practice our customs, or to speak and teach our languages. The process of Burmanization that has already been going on for decades will be accelerated.

The Karen know from personal experience just how bad this process is. Karen people in the Delta and Rangoon are being stripped of their identity and younger generations can't speak, read or write our own language, don't know our history, and even use Burman names to avoid discrimination in employment. Our vision is for a new federal constitution that will guarantee the rights of ethnic people.

The international community seems content to wait and see if elections in 2010 create a little political space. While they focus on the minutiae of politics in Rangoon and Naypyidaw, all around them Burma is descending into an even greater human rights and humanitarian crisis. They must wake up to the urgency of the current situation.

The crisis is unfolding before our eyes. Escalating military attacks on ethnic people are leading to a major humanitarian crisis and creating regional instability. Already we have seen thousands more refugees arrive in Thailand and China. More government soldiers have been sent to Karenni and Shan states, and with the generals breaking cease-fire agreements, the regime will soon also be on the warpath in Kachin and Mon states.

For those of us on the ground it is hard to understand why the United Nations seems content to allow the dictatorship to follow its own agenda in direct defiance of the Security Council and General Assembly.

Time and again the UN has said that there must be tri-partite dialogue between the National League for Democracy (NLD), ethnic representatives and the dictatorship.

The Karen National Union is ready to talk. Other ethnic organizations are ready to talk. The NLD is ready to talk. It is the generals who refuse to talk.

Luckily for them, it seems the United Nations is all talk, but no action.

Zipporah Sein is general secretary of the Karen National Union.

http://www.irrawaddy.org/opinion_story.php?art_id=16985

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Question | Spokesperson Scott Ludlam

Thursday 10th September 2009, 6:58pm

Senator LUDLAM (2.28 pm)-My question is to the Minister representing the Minister for Foreign Affairs. What has the government done in response to revelations made by defectors from Burma's nuclear program, reported by Professor Des Ball from the ANU and also raised by the US Secretary of State in a recent ASEAN meeting, regarding the clandestine nuclear weapons program? When will our ambassador in Vienna put this on the agenda of the IAEA board of governors or, for example, raise this with the IAEA Director- General? And has the minister been briefed by the Australian Safeguards and Non-Proliferation Office?

Senator FAULKNER-I did not actually hear the last part of your question, Senator Ludlam. Let me respond to those parts that I was able to hear. I certainly can say to Senator Ludlam that I am aware of unconfirmed reports that Burma may be developing a nuclear capability. It is true that Australia shares the concerns of the international community about Burma's possible nuclear weapons aspirations and its relationship with the DPRK. A nuclear armed Burma would be a serious threat to regional and international security and it would be a setback to efforts to advance nuclear disarmament and the non-proliferation regime. The Australian government calls on the Burmese government to be transparent about any nuclear activities. The fact that Burma is a signatory of the nuclear non-proliferation treaty requires it to place any nuclear facilities under International Atomic Energy Agency safeguards. Australia expects Burma to abide by all its obligations under that treaty. We also call on Burma to meet is obligations under UN Security Council resolutions 1874 and 1718, which in addition to an arms embargo prohibit the procurement from North Korea of items related to nuclear, chemical or biological weapons and also ballistic missiles. (Time expired)

Senator LUDLAM-Mr President, I ask a supplementary question. The minister used the word ‘unconfirmed'. This research has been on the public record now for a matter of a couple of weeks, so I am wondering if the minister can tell me whether the government has done anything at all to confirm or validate these reports. With particular regard to the minister's understanding of Russian government collaboration with the public Burmese light water reactor, which potentially supports the clandestine factor, will the minister reconsider the wisdom of uranium sales to Russia, given the clear proliferation risks and the risks to regional security implied by a Burmese nuclear weapons program? Has the government done anything at all since these reports were made public?

Senator FAULKNER-I have used the terminology ‘unconfirmed' in relation to the substance of the reports. I accept the point that you have made that reports have been published. There have been articles in a range of Australian newspapers, including reports from an Australian academic, Professor Des Ball, and a Thailand based Irish journalist, Phil Thornton, who according to those reports interviewed Burmese defectors in Thailand, as you are aware. The point that I made in relation to them being unconfirmed is not about the fact that the reports appeared; just about whether the substance of the reports is accurate. In relation to Russia, quite clearly, there is- (Time expired)

Senator LUDLAM-Mr President, I ask an additional supplementary question. I wonder whether the minister might come back to what he was about to tell us with regard to Russia. Can you specifically confirm for us that the government has not sought a briefing with ASNO, has not raised the issue with the IAEA board of governors, has not done anything to confirm or validate the research that has been put on the public record and has not raised this with the IAEA directorgeneral? Can the minister confirm that none of those actions have been taken and perhaps advise whether anything at all has been done?

Senator FAULKNER-I am not aware of the issues in relation to a briefing. I will need to find more information out about that. I am not able to talk about any classified briefings that the government might have received. However, I will certainly seek specific advice in relation to the briefing that you have requested. In relation to the Russian issue that you raised, you might recall that a new nuclear cooperation agreement was signed in September 2007 during the APEC summit by the former Foreign Minister, Mr Downer. That agreement allows for the use of Australia uranium in the Russian civil nuclear sector only and I can say that it does fully meet Australia's strict safeguard requirements.

Senator FAULKNER (New South Wales- Minister for Defence) (3.17 pm)-Mr Deputy President, you would recall that in question time Senator Ludlam asked me some questions about Burma and I provided him with all the information I had available. He asked two specific supplementary questions which I can now assist him with. Senator Ludlam asked whether the government had received any briefing from ASNO or the department on Burma in advance of or after reports that Burma had a clandestine nuclear program. The answer to that question is yes. He also asked whether the department raised the issue of Burma's nuclear program with the IAEA. I can inform the Senate that the answer to that question is yes. The IAEA contact said there was no new evidence in the media reports.

http://scott-ludlam.greensmps.org.au/content/question/burma%E2%80%99s-nuclear-program

ENC Fund Raising Event

2009-10-08T03:53:00.000-07:00

Myanmar says nuclear ambitions are peaceful - Japan

2009-10-06T20:07:00.001-07:00

By Ek Madra

Saturday October 3, 2009

SIEM REAP, Cambodia (Reuters) - Japan said on Saturday it had been assured by military-ruled Myanmar that it was not developing nuclear weapons even though it was working with Russia on a nuclear energy programme.

Myanmar has remained tight-lipped about its nuclear plans, despite speculation it has been receiving help from North Korea to build nuclear facilities near its remote capital with the intent of developing a weapon.

Myanmar's Foreign Minister Nyan Win told his Japanese counterpart Katsuya Okada that his country was seeking Russia's expertise, but only in developing a peaceful energy programme for its people.

"(Nyan Win) told Japan's foreign minister that Myanmar has no intention to have a nuclear weapon," Japan's Foreign Ministry spokesman Kazuo Kodama told reporters on the sidelines of a Mekong-Japan ministerial meeting in Siem Reap, Cambodia.

"Myanmar has conducted a consultation to have assistance from Russia for a peaceful use of nuclear energy."

Kazuo did not say if the issue of any nuclear links with North Korea was discussed.

Academic researchers said in August Myanmar was building a secret nuclear reactor and plutonium facility in caves tunnelled into a mountain, citing intelligence from two defectors.

The defectors also said Myanmar, which has known reserves of uranium ore, had provided refined "yellowcake" processed uranium that can be used as nuclear fuel to Iran and North Korea.

The isolated country has been under Western sanctions for two decades and analysts say a nuclearised Myanmar could trigger an arms race in the region.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said at a security forum in Thailand in July that she was concerned about the possible transfer of nuclear technology to Myanmar from North Korea.

In reference to ties between North Korea and Myanmar, U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Kurt Campbell, the top U.S. diplomat for Asia, said there were "some signs that that cooperation has extended into areas that would be prohibited".

However, many analysts have said evidence of attempts to develop nuclear weapons is scant and have questioned the reliability of the defectors' information.

(Writing by Martin Petty; Editing by Alison Williams)

Copyright © 2008 Reuters

http://thestar.com.my/news/story.asp?file=/2009/10/4/worldupdates/2009-10-03T201921Z_01_NOOTR_RTRMDNC_0_-428901-1&sec=Worldupdates

In search of a Burmese rebel leader

2009-09-11T00:26:00.000-07:00

Page last updated at 00:03 GMT, Friday, 11 September 2009 01:03 UK
By Ko Ko Aung
BBC Burmese Service

After flying half-way across the world I finally arrived at a rebel camp on the Thai-Burmese border on my quest to track down the elusive leader of the Pao National Liberation Army, Khun Thurein.

It took months of planning to meet the man, who with his force of just 100 men, is taking on the might of the Burmese military.

The men who follow him are all from a small ethnic minority group called the Pao. They have their own language, music, customs and traditional dress.

But they say the Burmese government is trying to destroy their culture. That's why two years ago Khun Thurein and his men dusted off their arms and began fighting once again.

In one recent ambush, Khun Thurein's men say they killed 12 Burmese soldiers.
The Pao are one of more than 100 different ethnic minorities in Burma. Most of them negotiated a ceasefire agreement with the Burmese government more than two decades ago.

Despite the Pao's own ceasefire agreement with the Burmese government in 1994, the Pao feel their culture is gradually disappearing.

As I waited to meet the elusive Khun Thurein, I decided to visit some rebel outposts inside Burma.

At one of the Pao rebel camps high in the mountains, I came across Khun Tun Kyaw.
He said he witnessed his dad being brutally murdered by Burmese soldiers and pro-government militias in 1993.

He vividly described how his father was "hanged from a tree, his stomach was cut open, his genitals were severed and stuffed into his mouth, and two bullets were pushed into each of his ears".

It's not the first time I've heard of such atrocities, but on this occasion I was lost for words.

Refugees

Many Pao felt they had no choice but to flee across the border to Thailand.

Many of them have ended up at the Ban Nai Soi refugee camp which was a couple hours drive away.

Some people have been living there for 15 years or longer, but several told me that they still missed Burma.

They might eventually find their way to another country, but it seems they will not find their way back to Burma where they really belong - simply because it is not safe, even in areas where the ceasefire still holds.

During my visit to the camp I met Ma San Thu, who explained why she joined Khun Thurein's army as a medic.

She told me about a nine-year-old girl who she treated who had been raped by a Burmese government soldier.

She said: "We complained but our leaders stopped us from speaking out. So the resentment just grew. This kind of thing happens very often, so we started to think why can't we defend our people."

The rebel leader

By this time I had received my long-awaited summons to meet the man himself - Khun Thurein.

His jungle headquarters was just on the other side of the border inside Burma.

I was the first journalist to be invited into Khun Thurein's camp, and he was anxious to take me on a tour.

As we headed out he explained that the Burmese government has been trying to establish a "Burmese mono-culture" in the country.

"Our leaders wanted peace and democracy. They wanted to sort out the political problems by political means. We never had a chance to sort the problems politically, so I thought the Burmese government would eliminate us."

Khun Thurein told me that he was well aware of the risk he was taking.

"We were under British colonial rule for 100 years. We fought them to reclaim our independence. The Burmese government [is a] fraction of the strength of the British Empire. So I believe that we can beat them."

Khun Thurein's wife admitted that she was very worried, and didn't know what would happen.

After all, it would take just one successful strike to wipe out Khun Thurein's entire force of just 100 men.

But, he said, "I would rather die fighting than bowing down to the pressure of the Burmese military regime to lay down arms without a political solution."

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/8247084.stm

နအဖႏွင့္ အပစ္ရပ္ ကိုးကန္႔တို႔ ၾကား ေသြးထြက္သံယိုမႈ စတင္ၿပီ

2009-08-27T20:51:00.001-07:00

ၾကာသပေတးေန႕၊ 27 ၾသဂုတ္လ 2009 သွ်မ္းသံေတာ္ဆင့္

နအဖစစ္တပ္ႏွင့္ ျမန္မာအမ်ိဳးသား ဒီမိုကေရစီ မဟာမိတ္တပ္မေတာ္ (MNDAA) (ေခၚ) ကိုးကန္႔လက္နက္ကိုင္ ၿငိမ္းခ်မ္းေရးအဖြဲ႔တို႔ၾကား ၾသဂုတ္လဆန္းပိုင္းမွ စတင္၍စစ္ေရးအရ တင္းမာမႈေရခ်ိန္ ထိုးတက္လာေနရာ ယေန႔တြင္ အျပန္အလွန္ ပစ္ခတ္မႈ စတင္ခဲ့ေၾကာင္း သိရသည္။

ယေန႔နံနက္(၁၀)နာရီခန္႔က သွ်မ္းျပည္(ေျမာက္ပိုင္း) ကိုးကန္႔အထူးေဒသ(၁) ဌာနခ်ဳပ္တည္ရိွရာ ေလာက္ကိုင္ၿမိဳ႕ အနီးရိွ ရန္လံုကိုင္းရြာတရုတ္နယ္စပ္ဂိတ္အနီးတြင္ ႏွစ္ဘက္ ပစ္ခတ္မႈျဖစ္ပြားခဲ့ျခင္း ျဖစ္သည္။

ကိုးကန္႔အဖြဲ႔ဥကၠဌ ဦးဖုန္ၾကားရွင္းေခါင္းေဆာင္သည့္ တပ္ဖြဲ႔၀င္မ်ားႏွင့္ နယ္စပ္ဂိတ္ေစာင့္ ဗမာရဲတို႔ အျပန္အလွန္ ပစ္ခတ္ခဲ့ၾကျခင္းျဖစ္ၿပီး ပစ္ခတ္မႈတြင္ ဗမာရဲတပ္ဖြဲ႔မွ (၃) ဦးေသဆံုးသြားေၾကာင္း တရုတ္နယ္စပ္ရိွ တိုင္းရင္းသား စစ္ဘက္သတင္း ရပ္ကြက္မွ သွ်မ္းသံေတာ္ဆင့္ ကို ေျပာသည္။

“ဒီေန႔မနက္ပိုင္း (၁၀) နာရီထိုးခါနီး (၁၅) မိနစ္ေလာက္မွာ နယ္စပ္တံတားမွာေစာင့္ေနတဲ့ ဗမာရဲနဲ႔ ကိုးကန္႔အဖြဲ႔ ေတြ႔ၿပီး ပစ္ၾကတယ္ ရဲ (၃) ေယာက္ေသသြားတယ္ က်န္တဲ့ (၄) ေယာက္ကေတာ့ တရုတ္ျပည္ထဲထြက္ေျပးသြား တယ္ ” လို႔ အဆိုပါ တိုင္းရင္းသားစစ္ဘက္သတင္းရပ္ကြက္ က ေျပာသည္။

(၁၉၈၉) ခုႏွစ္ကတည္းက ၿငိမ္းခ်မ္းေရးရယူထားသည့္ ကိုးကန္႔အဖြဲ႔ ဥကၠဌ ဦးဖုန္ၾကားရွင္း ေနအိမ္အား မူးယစ္ေဆး၀ါး ႏွင့္ လက္နက္စက္ရံုရိွသည္ဟု ဆိုကာ ယခုလ (၈) ရက္ႏွင့္ (၂၃) ရက္ေန႔မ်ားက နအဖလက္နက္ကိုင္ တပ္ ဖြဲ႔မ်ားက (၂)ႀကိမ္၀င္စီးခဲ့သည့္အတြက္ ႏွစ္ဘက္ တင္းမာလာခဲ့သည္။

ထိုသို႔ ႏွစ္ဘက္တင္းမာမႈ (၁) လနီးပါးၾကာ အခ်ိန္ကာလအတြင္း၌ နအဖစစ္တပ္၏ စစ္ေရး ၿခိမ္းေျခာက္မႈမ်ားေၾကာင့္ ကိုးကန္႔အဖြဲ႔အစည္း၏ ရပ္တည္မႈမွာ တစ္ဆစ္ခ်ိဳး ေျပာင္းလဲသြားရသည္။

အဖြဲ႔အတြင္း မတည္မၿငိမ္ျဖစ္ေပၚလာေသာေၾကာင့္ ေဒသတြင္းရိွျပည္သူမ်ားမွာ တရုတ္နယ္စပ္ဘက္ ထြက္ေျပး တိမ္းေရွာင္သူ (၁၀၀၀၀) နီးပါးခန္႔ရိွေၾကာင္း သိရသည္။

“ ဒီလ ေစာေစာပိုင္း တိုင္းမွဴးေအာင္သန္းထြဋ္ ေလာက္ကိုင္လာကတည္းက ရပ္ေ၀းက ဗမာ အလုပ္သမားေတြကို ေနရပ္ျပန္ဖို႔ ေျပာထားၿပီးၿပီပဲ အခုျဖစ္ေတာ့ လူေတာ့အကုန္ေရွာင္သြားၾကၿပီ အသက္ႀကီးတဲ့အဖြားႀကီး အဖိုးႀကီးေတြ ေလာက္ပဲ အိမ္ေစာင့္က်န္ထားေတာ့တယ္ ” လို႔ ေဒသတြင္းအေျခအေနကို ဆို႔စ္ က ေျပာသည္။

ယခုလိုပစ္ခတ္မႈျဖစ္ပြားခဲ့အၿပီး အေျခအေနသည္ ေအးစက္ၿငိမ္သက္လွ်က္ရိွကာ အခ်ိန္မေ႐ြးေသနတ္သံမ်ား ျပန္
ထြက္ေပၚလာႏိူင္ေၾကာင္း ေဒသခံတစ္ဦးက ေျပာသည္။

“ အခုေလာေလာဆယ္ေတာ့ ဘယ္လိုေျပာမလဲ ၿငိမ္ေနတယ္ ဒါေပမဲ့ ညျဖစ္မလား ေန႔ျဖစ္မလား ဆိုတဲ့ အေျခ အေနမ်ိဳးပဲ ခန္႔မွန္းရခက္တယ္ ” လို႔ သူကေျပာသည္။

လတ္တေလာအေျခအေနတြင္ ျမန္မာစစ္တပ္အင္အား (၂၀၀၀) ေက်ာ္ခန္႔ ကိုးကန္႔နယ္ေျမအတြင္းသို႔ ပို႔လြတ္ ထားၿပီး ေနာက္ထပ္စစ္အင္အားျဖည့္တင္းမႈမ်ားလည္း ရိွေနေၾကာင္း ေစာေစာက စစ္ဘက္သတင္းရပ္ကြက္ကေျပာသည္။

“ေနာက္ထပ္ဗမာစစ္တပ္က အင္အားျပန္ျဖည့္ေနတယ္လို႔ၾကားတယ္ တိုင္းရင္းသား မဟာမိတ္တပ္ေတြကေရာပဲ အင္အား ေတြျဖည့္ၿပီး အားလံုးအသင့္ျပင္ထားၾကၿပီ ” လို႔ သူကေျပာသည္။

မေန႔က ဖုန္းၾကားရွင္းေခါင္းေဆာင္သည့္ ကိုးကန္႔တပ္ဖြဲ႔မ်ားက ေၾကျငာခ်က္တစ္ေစာင္ထုတ္ျပန္ထားရာတြင္ နအဖ စစ္တပ္မ်ား ကိုးကန္႔ေဒသအတြင္းမွ ထြက္ခြာေပးရန္ေတာင္းဆိုခ်က္လည္း ပါ၀င္ေၾကာင္း သိရသည္။

သို႔ေသာ္ ယခုအေျခအေနသည္ နအဖက နယ္ျခားေစာင့္တပ္အသြင္ေျပာင္းလဲေရးကိုျငင္းဆိုခဲ့သည့္ ဥကၠဌ ဖုန္ၾကားရွင္း အပါအ၀င္ ေခါင္းေဆာင္ (၄) ဦးကို ၀ရမ္းေျပးအျဖစ္ ထုတ္ျပန္ထားကာ ဒုဥကၠဌ ပိုင္ဆံုခ်ိန္အား ဥကၠဌ အျဖစ္ ေရြးခ်ယ္ခဲ့၍ ေက်ာေထာက္ေနာက္ခံေပးထားသျဖင့္ အဖြဲ႔လည္း (၂) ျခမ္းကြဲသြားသည္။

နအဖက အေျခအေနကို အခြင့္ေကာင္းယူအျမတ္ထုတ္ႏိူင္ရန္ စစ္တပ္အင္အား(၂၀၀၀)ေက်ာ္ကို အေစာပိုင္းက တည္းက အထူးေဒသ (၁) ေလာက္ကိုင္ၿမိဳ႕သို႔ ပို႔ေဆာင္၍ ၿမိဳ႕အား ဆက္လက္ထိန္းခ်ဳပ္ထားဆဲျဖစ္သည္။

http://www.mongloi.org/burmese/2008-08-01-03-22-02/86-2008-08-01-03-20-45/506-2009-08-27-13-02-46.html

Expert Doubts Napyidaw’s Nuclear Program

2009-08-27T19:45:00.000-07:00

By WAI MOE

Thursday, August 27, 2009

A well-known expert on Burma’s military affairs is skeptical about recent reports on nuclear cooperation between the Burmese regime and North Korea.

In a paper published on the Australian Strategic Policy Institute’s Web site on Monday, Andrew Selth, an expert on Burmese military affairs and author of “Burma’s Armed Forces: Power without Glory,” expressed doubts about Burma’s nuclear capability.

Selth said that Burma’s recent arms and materiel purchases from various countries including North Korea “do not necessarily mean that the junta is engaged in a secret program to develop weapons of mass destruction (WMD).”

“Some generals—possibly including regime leader Snr-Gen Than Shwe—are clearly attracted to the idea of acquiring a nuclear weapon, in the belief that possession of WMD would give Burma the same stature and bargaining power that they believe is now enjoyed by North Korea,” Selth said.

“The key question, however, is whether this is just wishful thinking, or if there has been a serious attempt by the regime to pursue a nuclear weapons program,” he said.

In early August, based on interviews with defectors conducted over two years by Professor Desmond Ball of the Australia National University's Defense Study Center and Thailand-based journalist Phil Thornton, The Age, The Sydney Morning Herald and The Bangkok Post published stories saying that the junta could develop a nuclear bomb by 2014.

Selth said US officials knew about the Burmese defectors more than two years ago. “Yet, even when armed with the apparent revelations of all these defectors, the Bush administration remained conspicuously silent about Burma’s nuclear status,” he said.

Selth also said that the tunnels pictured in recent news reports were “quite modest” and would be vulnerable to attack by “a modern air force equipped with latest weapons.”

“Many of these underground facilities are probably for military purposes, such as command bunkers, air raid shelters and protective tunnels for vehicles and weapons systems,” Selth said, noting that the Burmese generals have feared an air attack ever since the Gulf War.

“Some are more likely to be related to civil engineering projects. None of the photos support claims of a secret nuclear reactor, or nuclear weapons project,” he said.

Facing an arms embargo since 1988, the Burmese junta sought to reduce its dependency on foreign arms suppliers, Selth said, suggesting that recent purchases could be part of a program for the country’s large defense industrial complex to produce more sophisticated weapons, rather than WMD.

Selth said that it is certain that North Korea is “selling Burma conventional arms, sharing its military expertise and experience, and helping it upgrade its defense infrastructure.”

However, Selth does not totally deny reports of Naypyidaw’s nuclear ambitions, saying that Burmese natural gas sales have given the regime untapped foreign exchange reserves that could be used to fund a nuclear program.

“Russia is providing technical training for a large number of Burmese servicemen and officials, including in the nuclear field,” he said. “Some sophisticated equipment has been imported, and it is possible that sensitive nuclear technologies have been provided to Burma by North Korea.”

Speaking in an interview on National Public Radio, Bertil Lintner, a Thailand-based expert on the Burmese junta, said that the Burmese are “certainly interested” in acquiring a nuclear weapon.

“[The Burmese are] seeing how the North Koreans have been able to stand up against the Americans and the rest of the world because they are nuclear-armed. And they would like to have the same kind of negotiating position,” he said.

According to Lintner, Beijing is “well aware of Burma’s nuclear ambitions,” and “there’s definitely Chinese complicity in this new cooperation between North Korea and Burma.”

However, Lintner said the Chinese can conveniently deny any role by saying that it is the North Koreans who are cooperating with Burma, and that China cannot control them.

http://www.irrawaddy.org/article.php?art_id=16650

Does Myanmar Want Nuclear Weapons?

2009-08-24T23:59:00.000-07:00

by Michael Sullivan

August 24, 2009

There is no doubt Myanmar has a nuclear program. It sent scientists, technicians and army officers to Russia for training in recent years. And Moscow has agreed to supply Myanmar, formerly Burma, with a small nuclear reactor for civilian use. The question is, do the Burmese generals want a nuclear weapon, too?
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STEVE INSKEEP, host:

Even as he tries to keep his domestic program from falling apart, the president has to pay attention to threats abroad. And this morning, we have a hint why the U.S. may need to pay attention to Myanmar. Last week, we heard from a Virginia senator, who visited that country. Here's one reason why that engagement matters. Myanmar, like Iran, has a nuclear program.

Here's NPR's Michael Sullivan.

MICHAEL SULLIVAN: There is no doubt Myanmar has a nuclear program. It sent scientists, technicians and army officers to Russia for training in recent years. And Moscow has agreed to supply Myanmar with a small nuclear reactor for civilian use. None of this is disputed. The question is do the Burmese generals want a nuclear weapon too.

Mr. BERTIL LINTNER (Yale Global Online): It is quite clear, I think, that although the Burmese may not have a bomb or even a nuclear capability - no, not yet - they're certainly interested in acquiring one.

SULLIVAN: That's Bertil Lintner. He has written extensively about both Myanmar and North Korea from his base in Thailand.

Mr. LINTNER: And they're seeing how the North Koreans have been able to stand up against the Damascus and the rest of the world because they are nuclear armed. And they would like to have the same kind of negotiating positions.

SULLIVAN: Lintner's recent piece in Yale Global Online detailed the growing defense ties between the two countries and the elaborate underground complexes Myanmar's generals are building with help from North Korea. The tunnels, and the reports this summer - ships from North Korea with mysterious cargos bound for Myanmar - have many countries concerned, including the U.S.

Secretary of State Clinton speaking last month in Thailand.

Secretary HILLARY CLINTON (Department of State): We know that there are also growing concerns about military cooperation between North Korea and Burma, which we take very seriously. It would be destabilizing for the region, it would pose a direct threat to Burma's neighbors and it is something as a treaty ally of Thailand that we are taking very seriously.

SULLIVAN: But the ship may have already sailed. Interviews with defectors, done by Professor Desmond Ball of the Australia National University's Defense Study Center and journalist Phil Thornton, suggest Myanmar is already well on its way with two reactors already in place.

One of the defectors who worked for a prominent Burmese businessman with close ties to the military, says his former boss helped transport materials from North Korean ships to the remote nuclear sites.

Unidentified Man: Their first intention is with the help of North Korea, they produce U235. If they get U235, (unintelligible) not so difficult. If they can arrange UF6, they can make the nuclear bomb.

SULLIVAN: Phil Thornton says he believes the defector's story to be both credible and worrisome, since it matches what other defectors interviewed in Thailand has said.

Mr. PHIL THORNTON (Journalist): Professor Ball has estimated, based on the defector's testimonies, that it could be about 2014 that may have enough nuclear material to start thinking about a weapon.

SULLIVAN: Myanmar, of course, denies any weapons program exists, but seems unusually sensitive to the recent publicity about the issue. Virginia Senator Jim Webb says it came up during his meetings with Myanmar's leadership ten days ago.

Senator JIM WEBB (Democrat, Virginia): I did not directly raise the issue of the nuclear program. It was raised to me by a high governmental official, basically saying, you know, we would never move toward a nuclear weapons program.

SULLIVAN: These denials, of course, are met with a great deal of skepticism by those who follow the growing relationship between North Korea and Myanmar. But analyst Bertil Lintner still isn't convinced Myanmar has even one reactor, let alone two. There is no concrete evidence, he says, that the Russians have delivered the reactor they promised, nor, he says, is there any hard evidence the North Koreans have either - though satellite images do show construction around Myanmar's suspected nuclear sites.

What is clear, Lintner says, is that Myanmar's main ally, China, is well aware of Myanmar's nuclear ambitions. Last year's clandestine visit to North Korea but a senior Burmese general, he says, proves it.

Mr. LINTNER: He passed through China on his way to North Korea, back again. On his way back from North Korea, Shwe Mann and his entourage had meetings with high-level officials. It was almost as the Chinese were, not only aware of what this trip through North Korea, but they were closely involved in it. See, it's very convenient for the Chinese to be able to say, we're not doing this. This is the North Koreans. We can't control them. It's kind of a sort of plausible deniability. But there's definitely Chinese complicity in this new corporation between North Korea and Burma.

SULLIVAN: Something else for the U.S. to think about as it considers a review of its policy toward Myanmar, amid the ongoing tug-of-war with North Korea over its nuclear program.

Michael Sullivan, NPR News.

INSKEEP: This is NPR News.

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http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=112164691&ft=1&f=1004

Drug dealers put to death

2009-08-24T21:27:00.000-07:00

Writer: KING-OUA LAOHONG
Published: 25/08/2009 at 12:00 AM
Newspaper section: News

Two convicted drug traffickers at Bang Khwang prison have been executed by lethal injection.

Bundit Jaroenwanit, 45, and Jirawat Poompreuk, 52, yesterday became the country's fifth and sixth people to be executed by lethal injection, which replaced death by shooting in 2003.

The atmosphere at Bang Khwang prison in Nonthaburi was subdued yesterday when the two learned they were about to die.

They were given 60 minutes to call or write to their loved ones. They were then offered a last meal and a chance to listen to a sermon from a monk invited from Wat Bang Praek Tai.

They were blindfolded and given flowers, candles and incense sticks before being taken to the execution chamber.

The two, their legs manacled, turned their faces towards the temple as they were laid out on beds.

They received three injections. The first was a sedative, the second a muscle relaxant and the third a drug that stops the heart beating.

http://www.bangkokpost.com/news/local/22629/drug-dealers-put-to-death

'Evidence lacking' of Burma's nuke plans

2009-08-24T03:02:00.000-07:00

August 24, 2009 - 6:49PM

Information leaking out of Burma raises suspicions of a clandestine nuclear program in cahoots with North Korea but there's no solid evidence, a new study says.

The paper, released by the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI) says any suggestion of a secret weapons of mass destruction (WMD) program conducted by a rogue state like Burma must be cause for serious concern.

The author, Griffith University research fellow Andrew Selth, said no one could underestimate the lengths to which Burma's military leaders would go to stay in power and to protect the country from perceived external threats.

"Some of the information that has leaked out of Burma appears credible, and in recent years other snippets of information have emerged which, taken together, must raise suspicions," he said.

Relations between Burma and North Korea, which both achieved independence in 1948, have been traditionally patchy but warmed in 1988 when Burma was ostracised by the west after the abortive 1988 pro-democracy uprising.

Mr Selth said reliable information was scarce but it seemed that Burma had purchased weapons and munitions from North Korea. Periodic visits of North Korean freighters to Rangoon have prompted speculation that Burma has acquired more advanced weaponry, such as SCUD-type missiles.

Media reports last month claimed Burma had embarked on a secret nuclear weapons program, aided by North Korea which has long conducted a clandestine nuclear weapons program, testing devices in 2006 and 2009.

Mr Selth said the US had steadfastly refused to accuse Burma of a secret WMD program, probably because it did not feel there was sufficient reliable evidence to mount a public case.

"Understandably, foreign officials looking at this issue are being very cautious. No one wants a repetition of the mistakes which preceded the 2003 Iraq War, either in underestimating a country's capabilities, or by giving too much credibility to a few untested intelligence sources," he said.

Mr Selth said the challenge was to determine if Burma had such a program and if so, to do something about it.

He said Burma's regime did not seem to fear international criticism or the threat of increased sanctions.

"The exposure of a WMD program would probably see Burma expelled from ASEAN," he said.

"Even if that were to occur, however, the generals seem prepared to see Burma return to its pre-1988 isolation and poverty, if that was the price they had to pay to remain masters of the country's and their own destiny."

http://news.smh.com.au/breaking-news-national/evidence-lacking-of-burmas-nuke-plans-20090824-ewf7.html

Max Myanmar Company awarded mining contract

2009-08-23T21:39:00.000-07:00

By May Kyaw
Friday, 21 August 2009 16:16

Chiang Mai (Mizzima) - The Burmese Ministry of Mines has awarded Max Myanmar Group of Companies, a domestic conglomerate owned by business tycoon Zaw Zaw, a contract to produce lime stone on the basis of an with agreement signed between the two sides on August 18.

Headed by the Myanmar Football Federation President Zaw Zaw, the Max Myanmar Group of Companies has signed an agreement with the No (3) mining department of the Burmese Ministry of Mines to produce lime stone, according to a report in the state-run newspaper, New Light of Myanmar, report on Friday.

The newspaper said the lime stone will be supplied as raw material for the cement factory to be built near the capital Naypyitaw’s Taungphilar region. The cement factory is expected to produce 50 tons of cement daily.

The production contract was signed on August 18, at the meeting hall of the Ministry of Mines in Naypyitaw, the newspaper said.

The contract signing ceremony was attended by the Minister for Mines Brig Gen Ohn Myint and Managing Director of the Max Myanmar Group of Companies Zaw Zaw and Director Ohn Kyaw.

The 43-year-old business tycoon Zaw Zaw is the son-in-law of Thein Htut, who is also known as Pepsi Thein Htut because of his dealership of the Pepsi Co. which in 1997 withdrew its presence in Burma. The Max Myanmar Company has been awarded contracts in construction, hotel and tourism and gems and jewellery mining. Zaw Zaw is also president of the MFF and the Myanmar Tennis Federation.

His close rapport with the ruling military junta, has forced the United States to list him among individuals that the US has imposed sanctions on including restrictions in travelling to the US and freezing of his foreign assets.

http://www.mizzima.com/news/inside-burma/2660-max-myanmar-company-awarded-mining-contract-.html

RI supports Myanmar’s nuclear energy program

2009-08-23T03:50:00.000-07:00

Lilian Budianto , The Jakarta Post , Jakarta | Sat, 08/22/2009 11:58 AM | World

Indonesia will support Myanmar’s nuclear energy program for civilian use, said a top official on Friday, amid controversy concerning the junta’s poor human rights records and its nuclear weapon ambition.

Rezlan Ishar Jenie, Foreign Ministry’s Director General for Multilateral Affairs, said Myanmar, as a member of the Non Proliferation Treaty (NPT), had the right to develop nuclear energy for peaceful purposes, regardless of how the country has enforced its human rights.

“Our concern about [Myanmar’s] human rights records is separate from wishing to develop nuclear energy for peaceful purposes,” he said.

“We oppose nuclear weapons but not nuclear energy for peaceful use. The most important thing is the control from the IAEA [International Atomic Energy Agency],” said Rezlan during a memorial lecture and award presentation at the Indonesia’s Institute of Science (LIPI).

The Memorial lecture to commemorate LIPI first chairman, Sarwono Prawirohadjo, was delivered by Dewi Fortuna Anwar, senior researcher of the institute and also member of the UN Secretary-General’s Advisory Board member on Disarmament Matters (2008-2009).

Indonesia is a loud critic of Myanmar, which harshly suppressed the political dissent. The Myanmar military regime, who refused to acknowledge the 1990 landslide victory of main opposition party, has jailed thousands of political prisoners and dissenters, including opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi.

Myanmar’s court has recently handed out another 18 months of house arrest to Suu Kyi for violating her house arrest terms in a trial the global community called a “sham”. Yangon has also recently drawn international concerns over reports from Australia that Myanmar will develop nuclear weapons with the help of North Korea.

Indian authorities have intercepted a North Korean ship over suspicion that it contained radioactive material for Myanmar. Myanmar has said they aimed to build a nuclear power plant for electricity but the Sydney Morning Herald reported recently that North Korea is helping Myanmar build a secret nuclear reactor and plutonium extraction plan.

In response to the controversy of Myanmar’s purpose of importing nuclear materials, Rezlan said: “Every member of NPT has the right to develop nuclear energy for civilian use under the control of IAEA.”

He added the interception of shipment of nuclear materials from North Korea to Myanmar was conducted based on the decision of UN Security Council that ruled members to halt the transfer of all nuclear material to or from North Korea, and was not aimed at banning Yangon from developing nuclear energy.

“We have no problem if Myanmar wants to develop nuclear technology for peaceful purpose with the help of other countries,” said Rezlan, nodding in agreement when asked whether Jakarta agreed with Myanmar getting help from China in developing its nuclear technology.

Dewi, who delivered the speech on disarmament of weapons of mass destruction, said although the reports over Myanmar’s nuclear weapon strive had yet to be verified, it had sparked worries over the future of the region’s nuclear-weapons-free-zone deal signed under the ASEAN Bangkok Treaty.

“Myanmar is allowed to develop nuclear technology for peaceful use. However it has to be noted that there is not much difference between nuclear technology for peaceful use and for warfare. Uranium material can be converted into nuclear weapon through enrichment. That’s why the control over the use is very important,” she said.

http://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2009/08/22/ri-supports-myanmar%E2%80%99s-nuclear-energy-program.html

ကရင္အခ်င္းခ်င္းျပန္လွည္ပူးေပါင္းရန္ ႀကိဳးပမ္းေန

2009-08-20T21:33:00.000-07:00

ကရင္အခ်င္းခ်င္းျပန္လွည္ပူးေပါင္းရန္ ႀကိဳးပမ္းေန

ကို(၂)/ ၾသဂုတ္ ၁၉၊ ၂၀၀၉

ခြဲထြက္သြားခဲ့ေသာ ကရင္ဗုဒၵဘာသာတပ္မေတာ္ႏွင့္ ကရင္အမ်ိဳးသားလြတ္ေျမာက္ေရးတပ္မေတာ္တို႔ တဖန္ ျပန္လည္ပူးေပါင္းရန္ ကမ္းလွမ္းမႈမ်ားရွိလာသည့္အတြက္ ကရင္အမ်ိဳးသားအစီးအရံုး(ေကအဲန္ယူ)အတြက္ သတင္းေကာင္းတခု ျဖစ္လာပါသည္။

ဒီမိုကရက္တစ္ တိုးတက္ေသာ ဗုဒၶဘာသာ ကရင္အမ်ဳိးသားတပ္မေတာ္(ဒီေကဘီေအ)အဖြဲ႔မွ ေကအဲန္ယူ တပ္မေတာ္အား ၿပီးခဲ့သည့္ ဇြန္လက တိုက္ခိုက္ေျခမုန္း ျခင္းေၾကာင့္ ကရင္ျပည္သူ (၃၀၀၀)ေက်ာ္ အိုးမဲ့အိမ္မဲ့ ျဖစ္ကာ ထိုင္းႏိုင္ငံသို႔ထြက္ေျပးသိမ္းေရွာင္ခံခဲ့ရာမွ ယခုလိုျပန္လွည္ ပူးေပါင္းရန္ ကမ္းလွမ္းမႈမ်ား ျဖစ္ေပၚလာသည္။

ၿပီးခဲ့သည့္ ဇြန္လႈိင္လမွစ၍ ဒီေကဘီေအဘက္မွ ေကအဲန္ယူတပ္မေတာ္ထံသို႔လာေရာက္ပူးေပါင္းရန္ ဆက္သြယ္မႈမ်ား စတင္ျဖစ္ေပၚလာခဲ့ၿပီး အေျခအေနမ်ား ဆက္လက္တိုးတက္သြားေရးအတြက္ ေကအဲန္ယူ တပ္မဟာ (၆)အေနျဖင့္ ဆက္သြယ္ညွိႏိႈင္းမႈမ်ားျပဳလုပ္ေနပါေၾကာင္း ေကအဲန္ယူ ဗဟုိအလုပ္မႈေဆာင္ ေကာ္မတီ၀င္ တဦးျဖစ္သည့္ ပဒိုေဒးဗစ္ေထာကေျပာသည္။

၎က “ကရင္အခ်င္းခ်င္းကရင္ သတ္ရမယ့္ ျဖတ္ရမယ္။ ေနာက္ၿပီးေတာ့ ဒီဗမာစစ္တပ္ေတြ စိတ္ခ်မ္းသာေအာင္ ကရင္ေတြက ေသေပးရမယ္ ဆုိတဲ့ဟာမ်ဳိးကေတာ့ ဒီေကဘီေအလည္း မလုိခ်င္ဘူး။ ေကအဲန္အဲလ္ေအလည္း မလုိခ်င္ပါဘူး” ဟု ဆက္ေျပာပါသည္။

ဒီေကဘီေအမွ ေကအဲန္ယူတပ္မဟာ(၆)အတြင္း ျပန္လွည္ပူးေပါင္းႏိုင္ရန္ ကမ္းလွမ္းေနသည့္ အေျခအေနမ်ားကို ေကအဲန္ယူမွ ထိပ္ပိုင္းေခါင္းေဆာင္မ်ားကလည္း လက္ခံႀကိဳဆိုလိုက္ပါသည္။

ဒီေကဘီေအမွ တပ္ဖြဲ႔၀င္မ်ားကို ၎တုိ႔၏ ရာထူးအတုိင္း တာ၀န္ထမ္းေဆာင္ခြင့္ ေပးႏုိင္ေရးအတြက္ တပ္မဟာ(၆)ႏွင့္ ေကအဲန္ယူေခါင္းေဆာင္ပိုင္းတို႔အေနျဖင့္ သင့္ေလွ်ာ္သည့္အတုိင္း အေကာင္အထည္ ေဖာ္သြားမွာျဖစ္ၿပီး၊ အႀကံဉာဏ္ေပးသြားမည္ဟုဆိုသည္။

၂၀၁၀ ေရြးေကာက္ပြဲမတိုင္မွီ ျမန္မာစစ္အစိုးရမွ ၎တို႔ႏွင့္အပစ္ရပ္ယူထားေသာဒီေကဘီေအကို ေအအဲန္ယူအား “အျမစ္ျပတ္ေျခမုန္းရန္” တြန္းအားေပးမႈမ်ား ျဖစ္ေပၚေနၿပီး၊ တခ်ိန္တည္းမွာပင္ အျခားေသာ တိုင္းရင္းသား လက္နက္ကိုင္ အပစ္အရပ္မ်ားကိုလဲ နယ္ျခားေစာင့္တပ္အျဖစ္အသြင္ေျပာင္းရန္ ဖိအားေပးမႈမ်ား ရွိေနသည္ကို ႏိုင္ငံတကာသတင္းဌာနမ်ားႏွင့္ ျပည္ပေရာက္ ျမန္မာသတင္းဌာန အေတာ္မ်ားမ်ားက အစီရင္ခံတင္ျပမႈမ်ား ရွိေနသည္။

ဒီေကဘီေအကို ဦးသာထူးေက်ာ္ ေခါင္းေဆာင္ကာ ၂၀၀၄ခုႏွစ္တြင္ ေကအဲန္ယူမွခြဲထြက္၍ စစ္အစိုးရႏွင့္ အပစ္ရပ္ယူၿပီး ကရင္ျပည္နယ္ လႈိင္းဘဲြ႔ၿမိဳ႕နယ္ ၿမိဳင္ႀကီးငူ ရြာတြင္ အေျခစုိက္ေနထုိင္သည္။

http://ktimes.org/thatin/1-latest-news/437-2009-08-19-13-35-35.html

Moscow stands by Myanmar nuclear cooperation deal

2009-08-20T02:23:00.000-07:00

19:48 21/07/2009

MOSCOW, July 21 (RIA Novosti) - Nuclear cooperation between Russia and Myanmar is not in conflict with the Nonproliferation Treaty or IAEA requirements, and will move ahead, a Foreign Ministry spokesman said on Tuesday.

Andrei Nesterenko's comment came in response to U.S. concerns over the cooperation.

However, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said earlier on Tuesday that Washington was taking concerns about military cooperation between nuclear-armed North Korea and Myanmar "very seriously," but made no mention of Russia.

"Our cooperation with Myanmar is absolutely legitimate and in full compliance with our obligations under the Nonproliferation Treaty and IAEA requirements," Nesterenko said.

He added that the IAEA had no problem with Myanmar over its nonproliferation commitments.

Russia signed an agreement in 2007 on the construction of a nuclear research center in Myanmar, and it will stand by this agreement, Nesterenko said.

The center will include a 10 MW light-water research reactor.

http://en.rian.ru/russia/20090721/155576709.html

The History Of Burma's Nuclear Ambitions

2009-08-18T22:53:00.000-07:00

THE HISTORY OF BURMA'S NUCLEAR AMBITIONS
The push for nuclear technology started way back in the 1950s and continues today

Writer: By Aung Zaw
Published: 9 August 2009 at 12:00 AM
Newspaper section: Spectrum

Reports of Burma's shady nuclear ambitions have resurfaced to take their place alongside warnings by US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton of secret military ties and possible technology transfers between Burma and North Korea.

However, to understand the present situation and Burma's nuclear ambitions we need to look at the past. Burma's interest in nuclear science and technology is, in fact, nothing new.

Three years ago, The Irrawaddy published a cover story on Burma's nuclear ambitions. A Burmese scholar, Maung Thuta, wrote: ''More than five decades ago, Kyaw Nyein, the pragmatic modernist among the ruling triumvirate, with U Nu and Ba Swe, and the driving force behind Burma's nascent industrialisation, oversaw the setting up in 1953, under the Ministry of Industry, of the Union of Burma Applied Research Institute (UBAEC), in collaboration with the American Armour Research Foundation.''

In 1955, the Atomic Energy Centre and the Atomic Minerals Department were established and dozens of young scholars and technicians were sent abroad, mainly to the US, to study medical physics, nuclear physics, nuclear, metallurgical and mining engineering and technical training in nuclear applications in instrumentation, agriculture and industry. The same year Burma attended the first international conference on peaceful uses of atomic energy, which was held in Geneva. Two years later, Burma joined the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).

Maung Thuta, in an article entitled ''Transparency Needed'', wrote ''at the dawn of the 'Atomic Age', Burma's nuclear elites centred around the UBAEC apparently had no doubts about propelling Burma into a modern industrial state through extensive research and development in the fields of power production, agriculture, medicine, industry and education''.

Indeed, Burma was well advanced in those days to develop a nuclear project, compared with neighbouring countries. In the early 1960s, a site for a nuclear research reactor was designated near the Hlaing Campus in Rangoon.

''However, the first phase of nuclear ambitions faltered and stagnated within a few years when the much-vaunted 'Pyidawthar' industrial plan failed and UBAEC patron Kyaw Nyein fell from grace amid disputes among the ruling political elite,'' Maung Thuta wrote.

Burma's early nuclear ambitions ended there. General Ne Win, who staged a military coup in 1962, had little interest in nuclear projects, nor did he trust scholars. So Burma's nuclear programme fell by the wayside, although in 1984 the general admitted to university professors at a private dinner party that he had made a blunder by ending it.

One of the experts from those times, Thein Oo Po Saw, who earned a master's degree in nuclear engineering from the University of Illinois in the 1950s, remains active in Burma today.

He played a crucial role in reviving Burma's Atomic Energy Committee and renewing links with the IAEA. He also urged the regime in 1995 to join the Regional Cooperative Agreement for Research, Development and Training in Nuclear Science and Technology in Asia and the Pacific (RCA).

The professor has taught at the Defence Services Academy in Maymyo and is now an adviser to the Ministry of Science and Tech nology and adjunct professor at the Yangon (Rangoon) Technological University.

Whatever the motives involved, the regime revitalised the nuclear project. Thein Oo Po Saw, renewed links with the IAEA. Since then, Burma has been demonstrating its intention to develop nuclear energy for ''peaceful purposes''.

The regime has outwardly supported the concept of nuclear-free zones and signed the Treaty on the Southeast Asia Nuclear Weapon-Free Zone, or Bangkok Treaty, in 1995. A year later, Burma signed the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty.

Burma's renewed interest in nuclear technology was evident, however. The Ministry of Science and Technology was created in 1997, and headed by an extreme nationalist, U Thaung, a graduate of the Defence Services Academy Intake 1.

Two years later, Burma began negotiations with Russia on a nuclear reactor project, and in January, 2002, the military regime confirmed plans to build a nuclear research reactor for peaceful purposes. The Deputy Foreign Minister at that time, Khin Maung Win, declared that Burma's ''interest in nuclear energy for peaceful purpose is longstanding''.

Thein Oo Po Saw also played a key role in the military-sponsored National Convention where he discussed a chapter of the draft constitution relating to the defence of the Union of Burma. He and several professional colleagues made an interesting suggestion.

The chapter under discussion on March 3, 2005, covered seven key points on national defence, including chemical and biological weapons.

The professor suggested an addition to the chapter to cover the ''prevention of terrorist acts and pressures'' in enacting laws regarding ''the defence of the Union of Myanmar [Burma] and of its every part, and to prepare a defence programme''.

That programme would potentially include ''conventional arms, ammunition and explosives, and non-conventional sophisticated strategic arms'' as well as ''nuclear energy, nuclear fuel and radiation, and mineral resources that produce them, highly classified materials, objects, areas, technologies, researches and information and special security issues, accidents concerning the persons whose work involves highly classified materials, objects, areas, technologies, researches and information, and compensation and insurance coverage for them in case of accidents'', according to a report in state-run newspaper The New Light of Myanmar.

Aung Toe, the chairman of the National Convention Convening Work Committee, replied by saying that such a programme _ particularly a nuclear one _ would incur international criticism if it was included in the chapter on defence and security.

Aung Toe's prediction was not wrong. Now some press reports _ including one published in Spectrum _ suggest that Burma is on the way to possessing a nuclear bomb.

The lack of transparency in Burma's nuclear programme, and the regime's repressive nature, only increased the suspicions of international critics and dissident groups.

Aside from Thein Oo Po Saw, Burma's nuclear project has been developed by Minister U Thaung, who signed the reactor agreement in Moscow with Russian counterpart Sergei Kiriyenko, the head of Russia's atomic agency. U Thaung is known to be close to junta chief Snr Gen Than Shwe and his deputy, Vice Snr Gen Maung Aye.

U Thaung has in-depth knowledge of Bur ma's mining and uranium sectors, and resigned his army post to become director general of the country's Department of Geological Survey and Mineral Exploration in the 1980s.

U Thaung visited Moscow several times in the past in pursuit of the nuclear deal. He also organised students and army officers to participate in nuclear orientation and training in Moscow. In 2006, nuclear physics departments were established in the universities of Rangoon and Mandalay, with enrolment controlled by the regime.

In 2006, Russia's ambassador to Burma, Dr Mikhail M Mgeladze, confirmed that about 2,000 Burmese students had been admitted to 11 academic institutions in Russia, under a bilateral agreement, and about 500 had returned to Burma with bachelor's, master's or doctorate degrees.

Russian companies are also actively involved in the search for uranium in upper Burma.

In the early 2000s, the regime confirmed publicly that uranium deposits had been found in several areas: Magwe, Taungdwingyi, Kyaukphygon and Paongpyin in Mogok, and Kyauksin and in the southern Tenasserim Division.

The Russian companies Zarubezhneft, Itera, Kalmykia and the state-owned enterprise Tyazhpromexport have been involved in oil and gas exploration and the establishment of a plant to produce cast iron in Shan State. Tyazhpromexport's investment alone is worth about US$150 million.

Aside from Russia, Burma's renewed diplomatic relations and secret military ties with North Korea no doubt heightened suspicions. Washington has repeatedly warned of nuclear technology transfer between the two nations.

In April, 2007, a North Korean freighter, the Kang Nam I, docked at Thilawa port, 30km south of Rangoon. Interestingly, Burmese officials said the ship, the first to visit Burma since the restoration of diplomatic relations, sought shelter from a storm. Two local reporters working for a Japanese news agency were briefly detained and turned back when they went to the port to investigate.

The Kang Nam I headed for Burma again recently, but turned back after being shadowed by a US destroyer in the harsh light of international attention.

The April, 2007, incident wasn't the first time a North Korean ship reported running into trouble in Burmese waters _ by a strange coincidence, the North Korean cargo vessel M V Bong Hoafan sought shelter from a storm and anchored at a Burmese port in November, 2006. The regime reported that an on-board inspection had ''found no suspicious material or military equipment''.

Indeed, to sceptics, the go-ahead for the nuclear reactor project, the arrival of North Korean ships and shady military ties (The Irrawaddy exposed one particular trip made to Pyonyang by Gen Shwe Mann in November, 2008, with exclusive photos) are new developments.

It is premature, however, to conclude that Burma intends to undertake the complicated and perilous process of reprocessing uranium to get weapons-grade plutonium, although strong suspicions remain and will continue to grow. Although there are unofficial reports that Burma has set a goal of becoming a nuclear nation by 2025, it is still unclear whether the regime intends to develop nuclear weapons. More solid evidence needs to emerge _ and, no doubt, Thein Oo Po Saw, U Thaung and Gen Maung Aye, who oversees the nuclear project, could provide it.

It is legitimate, however, to raise the issue and to inquire into the regime's intentions, in the interests of keeping nuclear technology out of the hands of the irresponsible regime.

Aung Zaw is founder and editor of 'The Irrawaddy' (www.irrawaddy.org).

http://www.bangkokpost.com/news/investigation/21765/the-history-of-burma-s-nuclear-ambitions

Defectors tell of Burma's secret nuclear reactor

2009-08-18T03:14:00.000-07:00

North Korea is helping country develop weapons, according to the men

By Roger Maynard in Sydney
Monday, 3 August 2009

Two of Asia's most oppressive regimes may have joined forces to develop a nuclear arsenal, according to strategic experts who have analysed information supplied by a pair of Burmese defectors.

The men, who played key roles in helping the isolated military junta before defecting to Thailand, have provided evidence which suggests Burma has enlisted North Korean help to build its own nuclear bomb within the next five years.

Details supplied by the pair, who were extensively interviewed over the past two years by Professor Desmond Ball of the Australian National University and Thai-based Irish-Australian journalist Phil Thornton, points to Burma building a secret nuclear reactor and plutonium extraction facility with the assistance of North Korea.

Related articles
• Burma's ruler: brutal, reclusive – and a skilled manipulator

Thitinan Pongsudhirak, the head of Thailand's Institute of Security and International Studies, said: "The evidence is preliminary and needs to be verified, but this is something that would completely change the regional security status quo.

"It would move Myanmar [Burma] from not just being a pariah state but a rogue state – that is one that jeopardises the security and well-being of its immediate neighbours," he said.

The nuclear claims, revealed by The Sydney Morning Herald at the weekend, will ring alarm bells across Asia. The newspaper said the testimony of the two defectors brought into sharp focus the hints emerging recently from other sources, supported by sightings of North Korean delegations, that the Burmese junta, under growing pressure to democratise, was seeking a deterrent to any foreign moves to force regime change.

Their evidence also reinforces concerns expressed by Hillary Clinton, the US Secretary of State, in Thailand last week about growing military co-operation between North Korea and Burma. "We worry about the transfer of nuclear technology and other dangerous weapons," she said at a regional security conference.

The two defectors whose briefings have created such alarm are both regarded as credible sources. One was an officer with a secret nuclear battalion in the Burmese army who was sent to Moscow for two years' training. He was part of a nuclear programme which planned to train 1,000 Burmese. "You don't need 1,000 people in the fuel cycle or to run a nuclear reactor. It's obvious there is much more going on," he said.

The other is a former executive of the regime's leading business partner, Htoo Trading, who handled nuclear contracts with Russia and North Korea. The man, who died in 2008, provided a detailed report which insisted that Burma's rationale for a nuclear programme was nonsense.

"They [the generals] say it is to produce medical isotopes for health purposes in hospitals. How many hospitals in Burma have nuclear science? he asked. "Burma can barely get electricity up and running. It's a nonsense," he said.

Professor Ball and Mr Thornton reported that the army defector claimed that there were more than five North Koreans working at the Thabeik Kyin uranium processing plant in Burma and that the country was providing yellowcake – partially refined uranium – to both Iran and North Korea.

The authors concluded that the illicit nuclear co-operation was based on a trade of locally refined uranium from Burma to North Korea in return for technological expertise.

What is missing in the nuclear chain at the moment is a plutonium reprocessing plant, but according to the army defector, one was being planned at Naung Laing in northern Burma, parallel to a civilian reactor which is already under construction with Russian help.

The secret complex would be hidden in caves tunnelled into a nearby mountain. Once Burma had its own plutonium reprocessing plant, it could produce 8kg of weapons-grade plutonium-239 a year, enough to build one nuclear bomb every 12 months.

If the testimony of the two defectors proves to be correct, the secret reactor could be operational by 2014, The Herald reported. "These two guys never met each other, never knew of each other's existence, and yet they both tell the same story basically," said Professor Ball.

"If it was just the Russian reactor, under full International Energy supervision, then the likelihood of them being able to do something with it in terms of a bomb would be zero," Professor ball said. "It's the North Korean element which adds danger to it."

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/defectors-tell-of--burmas-secret-nuclear-reactor-1766566.html

Is Burma Pursuing A Nuclear Program?

2009-08-18T02:42:00.000-07:00

By Leah Wawro

Evidence is surfacing that suggests that Burma, also known as Myanmar, may be pursuing a nuclear weapons program. Along with recent reports from defectors saying that the pariah regime is building a nuclear reactor and plutonium extraction facility in the North, a new photo of a mysterious and enormous building has been posted online.

Jeffery Lewis of the New America Foundation posted the image on his blog, Arms Control Wonk, and the Institute for Science and International Security (Isis) used the image in a report published on Monday. Obtained via Google Earth, it shows an "anomalous building buried in the ground north-east of Maymyo."

Although the Isis report says that it cannot "ascribe [the buildings] with obvious nuclear industrial characteristics," it also notes that Burma has carried out suspicious transactions with North Korean companies, including the aquisition of "extremely high precision equipment."

The building, which looks like a huge swimming pool, is approximately 80 meters (262 feet) on each side. Lewis notes that it is in a remote, mountainous area and there seems to be a power transmission line attached to it.

The Naypyidaw regime of Burma has known connections to North Korea and is guilty of many human rights abuses, but both the Bush and Obama administrations have been fairly quiet on speculations of its nuclear weapons program. Clinton did address the issue briefly at July's ASEAN summit meeting, saying "We know there are also growing concerns about military co-operation between North Korea and Burma, which we take very seriously."

According to a dramatic, and perhaps overblown, report in the Sydney Morning Herald, the two defectors independently described a tunnel complex used to build Burma's nuclear program:

The secret complex, much of it in caves tunnelled into a mountain at Naung Laing in northern Burma, runs parallel to a civilian reactor being built at another site by Russia that both the Russians and Burmese say will be put under international safeguards.

Burma expert Andrew Seith cautions that Burma's suspected nuclear program is "still the subject of considerable debate among scholars and officials," but agrees with many bloggers that the evidence against the Naypyidaw regime is mounting, and says there may be growing concern about the issue in the Obama administration.

The reports from ISIS are inconclusive, but the recently published image adds to the growing evidence of Burma's pursuit of a nuclear program that is certain to make the U.S. and Burma's neighbors anxious.

http://airamerica.com/blog/2009/aug/04/burma-pursuing-nuclear-program