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Burma would also receive expert training for its special forces, as well as air and defense training.

The Burmese officials who alerted the outside world to these developments were hunted down, brought to trial and sentenced to death.

Some army officials still at large insisted that the Burmese regime plans to acquire nuclear weapons. A former army official who still has connections within the army told The Irrawaddy recently that top army leaders believe that the possession of nuclear weapons will gain Burma more bargaining chips with the West and neighboring governments..

The official said, “They (Burmese leaders) look up to North Korea and Pakistan as role models and they are not out of touch and they always study the regional and international landscape with keen interest.”

Burma's nuclear program includes the acquisition of a 10-megawatt light water nuclear reactor from Russia. Its secret location is in Magwe, central Burma.

In 2006, nuclear physics departments were established in the universities of Rangoon and Mandalay, with enrollment controlled by the government.

In 2007, 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, master’s or doctorate degrees.

In May 2007, Russia and Burma signed a new agreement in Moscow “on the establishment of a nuclear research center in Myanmar.”

The signatories were Burma’s science and technology minister U Thaung and the head of Russia’s Nuclear Power Agency (Rosatom), Sergey Kiriyenko.

Russia is not on the US nuclear watch list.
 
“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,” according to Prof Desmond Ball, who specializes in security issues in the region. “It's the North Korean element that adds danger to it.”

Aung Zaw is founder and editor of the Irrawaddy magazine. He can be reached at [email protected].