DICTATOR WATCH
(www.dictatorwatch.org)

Contact: Roland Watson, roland@dictatorwatch.org

BURMA’S SECRET AGREEMENT WITH NORTH KOREA

May 16, 2007

Note: We have a new article, Free Burma! Boycott China’s Genocide Olympics!, about an emerging opportunity for popular resistance against Burma’s military junta, the SPDC. China, the SPDC’s leading supporter, is now vulnerable due to the fact that it will host next year’s Olympic Games. Burma activists worldwide should join the growing boycott against what are already being called the “Genocide Olympics.” Through this, we can force China to relent in its support, and create exponentially greater pressure on Than Shwe and his gang.


Russia has just announced that it will help design and build a nuclear research center in Burma, with a ten-megawatt light water reactor. This confirms a relationship, Russia assisting the SPDC’s nuclear aspirations, that has periodically come to light since 2001.

Dictator Watch has also learned that the SPDC, in its recent meetings with North Korean diplomats, concluded a secret agreement that includes a resumption of formal relations and other provisions.

North Korea is to provide assistance:

- In the construction of Burma’s nuclear reactor.
- In the development of 120 mm rockets and the construction of a production factory.
- In the production of anti-ship mines, and the development of strategies to use the mines to block shipping lanes. (Note: This last program can have only one purpose – to combat a U.S. intervention.)

Russia helped North Korea build its own reactors. It is assisting Iran as well. As previously reported, we have received information that the SPDC is supplying both North Korea and Iran with refined uranium, in contravention of United Nations Security Council sanctions. Russian geologists have also been prospecting for uranium in Burma.

What had been only the subject of speculation is now completely public. Russia, North Korea, Iran and Burma, and with connections to China and Pakistan, are engaged in a major nuclear proliferation effort. Iran and Burma argue that their programs are only for peaceful purposes, not weapons development. This is the same line that North Korea used, but as their weapons test last year demonstrated, it cannot be trusted.

Condoleezza Rice this week said that there was no new Cold War. Tell that to Russia and China, and their clients North Korea, Iran and Burma.