However, the agreement could not be implemented as Burma did not comply with IAEA guidelines requiring it to properly advise the nuclear body of its plans. Since then, and despite repeated prodding from Russia, Burma has not approached the IAEA, scuppering the prospects of progress between the two on the facility. Indeed, according to the dossier, it was Russia’s insistence on transparency that prompted Burma to look elsewhere for assistance in setting up a reactor-namely from North Korea.
Burma is said in the dossier to be building a 10 megawatt light water research reactor inside a mountain complex at Naung Laing in the north of the country, while North Korea has also built a huge underground bunker at Taungdwingyi next to a known uranium ore site.
Meanwhile, during visits by delegations of scientists led by a man known as Dr. Zaifullah, a deputy of notorious Pakistani scientist A Q Khan, in August and December 2005, Pakistan is believed to have offered nuclear technology cooperation, including the training of Burmese scientists. Under the agreement, Burmese officials from the Ministry of Science and Technology and Armed Forces are said to have attended a 12-month course on the ‘Adverse Effects of Nuclear and Biological Weapons.’
C S Kuppuswamy, who has been closely tracking Burma’s exploits in the nuclear sector, says that prior to former Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf’s visit to Burma in 2001, three Pakistani naval vessels-a submarine, a tanker and a destroyer-that made port calls to Burma and Pakistan are known to have supplied conventional weapons to Burma.
If true, analysts say such co-operation would only add to a sense of encirclement among Indian officials already acutely aware of an unstable and nuclear-armed Pakistan and a tense border dispute in Arunachal Pradesh with China.
And they believe Burma’s geo-strategic significance-and China’s covert military and strategic assistance-should be seen in the context of the Indian Ocean Region (IOR) as a whole.
According to Sanjaya Baru, a former media advisor to Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, force projection capacity in the IOR is essential for India. ‘We’re visible in East Africa due to our successful anti-piracy missions,’ he says. ‘But we have to show our presence in the Indian Ocean Region by rethinking the way we deploy our forces.’
The IOR stretches from Africa across to Australia and is the third largest water body in the world, with includes 33 littoral states. Eighty percent of China’s and 65 percent of India’s oil is shipped through this region.
‘The IOR is important because most of our energy and trade supplies flow through the area, so it needs to be protected,’ says Nitin Pai, a fellow at the Takshashila Institution, a non-profit trust in Chennai, Tamil Nadu. ‘We need to be ready to redeploy our forces to protect our strategic interests, especially as China is continuing to play its strategic games.’
Commodore (retired) Uday C. Bhaskar goes further, complaining that India has actually been going backward in this regard. ‘India allowed the influence it generated following the 2004 tsunami to be diluted because of its continued absence in Southeast Asia and the region,’ says Bhaskar, who currently heads the National Maritime Foundation, a New Delhi-based think tank.
In the near-term, the first task for Indian diplomats trying to regain their footing will be to face up to the challenge of how to handle the first multi-party elections in Burma in more than four decades of junta rule, which are scheduled for this year as part of the country’s seven-step roadmap to democracy.
But even if all goes smoothly, with the junta determined to hang on to power and apparently receiving covert support from Pakistan and North Korea (and moral support from China), there seems nothing that India–or any other country–can do as it hurtles down the nuclear road.
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Bill.
The Nuclear Genie is out of the bottle. The process to build a bomb is on the internet. There is no mystery anymore. Eventually, any and every country that wants nukes will have them. Uranium is found most anywhere. The question is…how do we manage a nuclear world?