ပအို၀္္းေတာ္လွန္ေရးအဖြဲ႕မ်ားေပါင္းစည္းကာ ပအို၀္္းအမ်ဳိးသား လြတ္ေၿမာက္ေရး အဖြဲ႕ခ်ဳပ္ဖြဲ႕စည္း
၂၀၁၀ စိန္ေခၚမႈကို ပအို၀္းအမ်ဳိးသားလြတ္ေျမာက္ေရးအဖြဲ႕ခ်ဳပ္က ရင္ဆိုင္ဖို႕ အဆင့္သင့္ျဖစ္
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ယခုလ ၇ ရက္ေန႕ မွ ၉ ရက္ေန႕အထိ က်င္းပခဲ့သည့္ ပအို၀္းအမ်ဳိးသားညီလာခံမွ ပအို၀္းအမ်ဳိးသား လြတ္ေျမာက္ေရး အဖြဲ႕ခ်ဳပ္ PNLO ထူေထာင္ေၾကာင္းထုတ္ျပန္ေၾကျငာခ်က္ျဖင့္၂၀၁၀ စိန္ေခၚမႈအား ရင္ဆိုင္ဖို႕ အဆင္သင့္ ျဖစ္ေနေၾကာင္း ဥကၠဌအျဖစ္ ေ႐ြးခ်ယ္တင္ေျမႇာက္ခံရသည့္ ဗိုလ္မႉးႀကီး ခြန္ဥကၠာက ေျပာသည္။
SSA ေတာင္ပုိင္းတပ္ဖဲြ႕ႏွင့္ PNLO ေအာက္ေျခတပ္ဖဲြ႕မ်ားၾကားပစ္ခတ္မႈျဖစ္ပြား
ႏုိ၀င္ဘာလ ၃၀ ရက္၊ ၂၀၀၉ ခုႏွစ္။
ရွမ္းျပည္တပ္မေတာ္ SSA ေတာင္ပုိင္းတပ္ဖဲြ႕ႏွင့္ ပအုိ၀္းအမ်ဳိးသားလြတ္ေျမာက္ေရး တပ္မေတာ္ PNLO တပ္ဖဲြ႕ ႏွစ္ခု၏ ေအာက္ေျခတပ္ဖဲြ႕၀င္မ်ားၾကား ပစ္ခတ္မႈတစ္ခုျဖစ္ပြား ခဲ့သည္။
ရွမ္းျပည္ေတာင္ပုိင္း ေမာက္မယ္ၿမိဳ႕နယ္အတြင္းရွိ ႏွစ္ဖက္တပ္မ်ားလႈပ္ရွားရာ နမ့္ပြန္ေခ်ာင္းအေရွ႕ဖက္၊ ေတာရွ ေဒါရြာအေနာက္ဖက္ရွိ ေတာင္ယာအတြင္း PNLO တပ္ဖဲြ႕မ်ား ထမင္းခ်က္စားေနစဥ္ SSAေတာင္ပုိင္း အမွတ္ ၃၆၁ တပ္ရင္းမွ လာေရာက္ ပစ္ခတ္ျခင္း ျဖစ္သည္ဟု PNLO ကေျပာသည္။
ေဒသခံမ်ားကုိ တရားမ၀င္အဖြဲ႔မ်ားႏွင့္ ဆက္သြယ္မႈျဖင့္ စြပ္စြဲအေရးယူေန
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
* 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
ေရြးေကာက္ပြဲဥပေဒထြက္ၿပီးမွ ပါတီဖဲြ႔ရန္ ပီအဲန္အို ဆံုးျဖတ္
ေအာက္တိုဘာလ ၂၀ ရက္၊ ၂၀၀၉ ခုႏွစ္။
သတင္းႏွင့္မီဒီယာကြန္ယက္
အပစ္ရပ္အဖြဲ႕ျဖစ္သည့္ ပအုိ၀္းအမ်ဳိးသားအဖြဲ႕ခ်ဳပ္(ပီအဲန္အို)သည္ ပါတီဖဲြ႕စည္းၿပီး ၂၀၁၀ ေရြးေကာက္ပြဲကို ၀င္ မည္၊ မ၀င္မည္ကို ေရြးေကာက္ပြဲ ဥပေဒ ထြက္ၿပီးမွသာ ဆံုးျဖတ္မည္ဟု ပီအဲန္အိုအဖဲြ႕မွ ဗဟိုေကာ္မတီ၀င္တဦးက ေျပာဆုိသည္။
ကုိးကန္႔အေရး နဲ႔ စစ္အစုိးရ လွည့္ကြက္ (ပအုိ၀္း ျပည္သူ႔လြတ္ေျမာက္ေရးအဖြဲ႕ဥကၠဌ ဗုိလ္မွဴးခြန္ဥကၠာႏွင့္ VOA မွ ေမးျမန္းခ်က္)
Civilians warned not to leak tunnel information
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
ျ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
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
Burma’s nuclear program
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
Myanmar says nuclear ambitions are peaceful - Japan
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.
"(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.
"
Kazuo did not say if the issue of any nuclear links with
Academic researchers said in August
The defectors also said
The isolated country has been under Western sanctions for two decades and analysts say a nuclearised
U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said at a security forum in
In reference to ties between
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
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
ယေန႔နံနက္(၁၀)နာရီခန္႔က သွ်မ္းျပည္(ေျမာက္ပိုင္း) ကိုးကန္႔အထူးေဒသ(၁) ဌာနခ်ဳပ္တည္ရိွရာ ေလာက္ကိုင္ၿမိဳ႕ အနီးရိွ ရန္လံုကိုင္းရြာတရုတ္နယ္စပ္ဂိတ္
ကိုးကန္႔အဖြဲ႔ဥကၠဌ ဦးဖုန္ၾကားရွင္းေခါင္းေဆာင္သည္
“ဒီေန႔မနက္ပိုင္း (၁၀) နာရီထိုးခါနီး (၁၅) မိနစ္ေလာက္မွာ နယ္စပ္တံတားမွာေစာင့္ေနတဲ့ ဗမာရဲနဲ႔ ကိုးကန္႔အဖြဲ႔ ေတြ႔ၿပီး ပစ္ၾကတယ္ ရဲ (၃) ေယာက္ေသသြားတယ္ က်န္တဲ့ (၄) ေယာက္ကေတာ့ တရုတ္ျပည္ထဲထြက္ေျပးသြား တယ္ ” လို႔ အဆိုပါ တိုင္းရင္းသားစစ္ဘက္သတင္းရပ္ကြ
(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 ေနာက္ထပ္စစ္အင္အားျဖည့္တင္းမႈမ်
“ေနာက္ထပ္ဗမာစစ္တပ္က အင္အားျပန္ျဖည့္ေနတယ္လို႔ၾကား
မေန႔က ဖုန္းၾကားရွင္းေခါင္းေဆာင္သည့္ ကိုးကန္႔တပ္ဖြဲ႔မ်ားက ေၾကျငာခ်က္တစ္ေစာင္ထုတ္ျပန္ထား
သို႔ေသာ္ ယခုအေျခအေနသည္ နအဖက နယ္ျခားေစာင့္တပ္အသြင္ေျပာင္းလဲ
နအဖက အေျခအေနကို အခြင့္ေကာင္းယူအျမတ္ထုတ္ႏိူင္
http://www.mongloi.org/
Expert Doubts Napyidaw’s Nuclear Program
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.
Does Myanmar Want Nuclear Weapons?
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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Copyright © 2009 National Public Radio®. For personal, noncommercial use only. See Terms of Use. For other uses, prior permission required.
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.
Copyright ©2009 National Public Radio®. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to National Public Radio. This transcript is provided for personal, noncommercial use only, pursuant to our Terms of Use. Any other use requires NPR's prior permission. Visit our permissions page for further information.
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http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=112164691&ft=1&f=1004
Drug dealers put to death
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
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
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
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
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
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
Defectors tell of Burma's secret nuclear reactor
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.
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• 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?
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
Burma denies nuclear power plant scheme: Asean nations rally to gain Suu Kyi amnesty
Published: 18/08/2009 at 12:00 AM
Newspaper section: News
Burma's junta has denied it is building a nuclear power plant, US Senator Jim Webb says.
Mr Webb, who met with regime officials at the weekend, said that while he did not discuss the issue directly with Burma's State Peace and Development Council chairman Than Shwe, "it was communicated to me early on that there was no truth to that from a very high level in the government".
US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has expressed concern about reports that North Korea and Burma were cooperating on nuclear technology.
Mr Webb was the first senior US official to meet with Snr Gen Than Shwe, according to the senator's office.
He met detained pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi and secured the release of US citizen John Yettaw, who was sentenced to seven years in jail with hard labour for swimming to her lakeside home in Rangoon and staying there for two days.
Mrs Suu Kyi, 64, was sentenced last week to jail for three years with hard labour, after being found guilty of breaching a detention order by letting Mr Yettaw stay in her home. Her sentence was commuted to 18 months under house arrest.
In Bangkok on Monday Mr Webb met Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva at Government House. He also met Foreign Minister Kasit Piromya at the Foreign Ministry.
Acting government spokesman Panitan Wattanayagorn said Mr Abhisit assured Mr Webb the Association of Southeast Asian Nations would not meddle in Burma's internal affairs and would not support any sanction measures against Burma.
Mr Webb told a press conference in Bangkok yesterday he wanted to be careful not to misrepresent Mrs Suu Kyi's views, but it was his "clear impression from her that she is not opposed to lifting some sanctions", and that "there would be some areas she would be willing to look at".
He said the sanctions issue was not specifically raised in his talks with Snr Gen Than Shwe, "although obviously it's the elephant in the bedroom".
Thailand, as the current Asean chair, is spearheading an effort to issue a letter from Asean foreign ministers to call for an amnesty for Mrs Suu Kyi.
Senior Asean officials will meet tomorrow and Thursday in Jakarta to discuss the final draft of the joint letter before sending it to the Burmese junta.
Mr Kasit said no Asean member was opposed to the idea and would like to cooperate even though some members were concerned about the Thai proposal and wanted to look at the final wording.
Mr Kasit went to lobby the foreign ministers of Indonesia and Singapore at the weekend. He also talked by phone with his Cambodian and Vietnamese counterparts yesterday.
Mr Kasit said the release of Mr Yettaw was an "encouraging sign".
"The release of Yettaw gave us hope that the Burmese government might consider on the issue of Mrs Suu Kyi as well," Mr Kasit said.
http://www.bangkokpost.com/news/local/22218/burma-denies-nuclear-power-plant-scheme
Experts Question Reports of Secret Myanmar Nuclear Program
Several experts have questioned the claims of two defectors from Myanmar that their home nation is operating a secret nuclear program that might be aimed at weapons production, Reuters reported yesterday (see GSN, Aug. 10).
The two men, interviewed extensively by a strategic analyst and a journalist over the course of two years, said they were part of a clandestine effort aided by North Korea to construct an underground nuclear facility capable of producing weapon-grade plutonium. They also said Myanmar had supplied "yellowcake" uranium to North Korea and Iran, according to a report in the Sydney Morning Herald.
However, Trevor Wilson, Australia's former ambassador to Myanmar, argued that defectors in generally should not be automatically believed.
"I wasn't entirely convinced the evidence they were sitting was pointing to a nuclear weapons program. It could have been a nuclear power program," Wilson said. "There's plenty of evidence of a military relationship [between Myanmar and North Korea] and also a suggestion over a long period that the Burmese army is interested in acquiring missiles from a country like North Korea, but not necessarily a nuclear-armed missile."
Wilson added that while Myanmar possesses uranium, nothing suggests that is in the business of processing the ore to produce "yellowcake, or anything else for that matter." Still, he said it was plausible that Myanmar's military government might trade the ore itself for missiles and conventional weapons.
He said Myanmar would have no strategic reason for developing nuclear arms, since it had no nuclear-armed enemies.
"Why would the Burmese army want to acquire nuclear weapons for national security?" Wilson said. "It would actually make them a target. It wouldn't help them with any threats they face, which are all of a conventional nature" (Bill Tarrant, Reuters I, Aug. 11).
While satellite photos do suggest a network of underground tunnels in Myanmar, some analysts say they are located in an unlikely spot for a nuclear reactor, Reuters reported.
The alleged site of the underground facility is too far from a water source to pipe in sufficient coolant for a nuclear reactor, analyst Sean O'Connor wrote last week on the Arms Control Wonk blog.
Another analyst, Mark Hibbs of the online publication Nuclear Fuel, said the structure shown in satellite images is probably "a non-nuclear industrial workshop or machinery center."
While some satellite photos "do indeed depict tunnel entrances and indoor or underground storage facilities," stated the Washington-based Institute for Science and International Security, those structures "are likely not nuclear industrial facilities" (Reuters II, Aug. 11).
http://www.globalsecuritynewswire.org/gsn/nw_20090812_8921.php
Q+A - Myanmar and N.Korea nuclear ties: smoke or fire?
SINGAPORE (Reuters) - Speculation that North Korea has been helping military-ruled Myanmar build nuclear facilities near its capital has been growing recently, with U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton voicing those concerns last month.
But are the reports -- including one mainly based on interviews with Mynamar defectors -- more smoke than fire?
Is Myanmar joining nuclear club with North Korea aid?
အပစ္ရပ္တိုင္းရင္းသားအဖြဲ႔ (၄) ဖြဲ႔ စစ္ေရးမဟာမိတ္အဖြဲ႔ ဖြဲ႔စည္း
နအဖစစ္အစုိးရ၏ တပ္ဖြဲ႔အသြင္ေျပာင္းေရး ကမ္းလွမ္းခ်က္ကုိ ျငင္းဆန္ေနသည့္ ျမန္မာျပည္ေျမာက္ပုိင္း အပစ္ရပ္ တုိင္းရင္းသားလက္နက္ကုိင္အဖြဲ႔ (၄) ဖြဲ႔တုိ႔ နအဖက စစ္ေရးအရ ပုိမုိဖိအားေပးလာလွ်င္ အတူတကြ စစ္ဆင္ေရးဆင္ႏႊဲႏုိင္ရန္ ရည္ရြယ္၍ စစ္ေရးပူးတြဲ မဟာမိတ္အဖြဲ႔ ဖြဲ႔စည္းလုိက္ေၾကာင္း သိရသည္။
စစ္ေရးမဟာမိတ္အဖြဲ႔တြင္ ကခ်င္အမ်ဳိးသားလြတ္ေျမာက္ေရးအဖြဲ႕ (KIO)၊ ဝျပည္ေသြးစည္းညီၫြတ္ေရးတပ္မေတာ္ (UWSA)၊ ကုိးကန္႔အဖြဲ႔ႏွင့္ မုိင္းလားအဖြဲ႔ ေခၚ ျမန္မာႏုိင္ငံ အမ်ဳိးသားဒီမုိကရက္တစ္ မဟာမိတ္တပ္မေတာ္ (NDAA-ESS) တုိ႔ ပါဝင္သည္ ဟု ကခ်င္သတင္းဌာနက ယမန္ေန႔တြင္ ေဖာ္ျပထားသည္။
အဆိုပါအဖြဲ႔ (၄) ဖြဲ႔အနက္ (၁) ဖြဲ႔က နအဖႏွင့္အပစ္အခတ္ရပ္စဲေရး ပ်က္ျပားသြားပါက က်န္ရိွသည့္အဖြဲ႔ (၃) ဖြဲ႔ကလည္း အပစ္အခတ္ရပ္စဲမႈ ပ်က္ျပယ္သြားမည္ျဖစ္ေၾကာင္း မဟာမိတ္အဖြဲ႔၏ သေဘာတူညီခ်က္တြင္ ပါရိွေၾကာင္း ကခ်င္သတင္းဌာနမွ အယ္ဒီတာ ကုိေနာ္ဒင္က ေျပာသည္။
“ဒီအပစ္ရပ္အဖြဲ႔ (၄) ဖြဲ႔က သူတုိ႔ မဟာမိတ္အဖြဲ႔ ဖြဲ႔လုိက္တယ္ဆုိတာ အတိအလင္းေတာ့ ေၾကညာတာမဟုတ္ဘူးခင္ဗ်။ နအဖက ဒီအပစ္ရပ္ထိန္းခ်ဳပ္တဲ့ေဒသေတြမွာ တပ္အင္အားတုိးခ်ဲ႕ေနတဲ့အတြက္ေၾကာင့္ ဇူလုိင္လကတည္းက ဒီအဖြဲ႔ကုိ ဖြဲ႔စည္းလုိက္တာ။ ဒီမဟာမိတ္အဖြဲ႔က သေဘာတူညီခ်က္ေတြထဲမွာ အဓိကက နအဖက ဒီမဟာမိတ္အဖြဲ႔တဖြဲ႔နဲ႔ အပစ္အခတ္ရပ္စဲေရး ပ်က္ျပားသြားလုိ႔ရွိရင္ အျခားအဖြဲ႔ေတြကလည္း နအဖကို ျပန္တုိက္ၾကဖုိ႔လည္း ပါတယ္။ နအဖက တုိက္လာရင္ သူတုိ႔က အကုန္တုိက္မယ္ေပါ့။ နအဖကလည္း အခုဆုိ သူတုိ႔နယ္ေျမမွာ စစ္အင္အားေတြ အမ်ားႀကီး တုိးခ်ဲ႕ထားတာဆုိေတာ့ တုိက္ပြဲက ဒီလအတြင္းမွာေတာင္ ျဖစ္လာႏိုင္တယ္” ဟု ေခတ္ၿပိဳင္သုိ႔ ေျပာၾကားသည္။
ရွမ္းျပည္ေျမာက္ပုိင္းတြင္ တည္ရွိသည့္ ေကအုိင္အုိ တပ္မဟာ (၄) ႏွင့္ ေကအိုင္အို ဌာနခ်ဳပ္တို႔ အဆက္အသြယ္ ျပတ္ေတာက္ေစရန္အတြက္ ေကအုိင္အုိအဖြဲ႔၏ ဌာနခ်ဳပ္ရွိရာ လုိင္ဇာေဒသတေလွ်ာက္တြင္ နအဖစစ္တပ္မွ အင္အား (၅) ေသာင္းခန္႔ ေရာက္ရွိေနေၾကာင္း ကုိေနာ္ဒင္က ေျပာသည္။
“နအဖနဲ႔ ဒီဘက္ (ေျမာက္) ပုိင္းက အပစ္ရပ္အဖြဲ႔ေတြရဲ႕အေျခအေနက အေတာ္ေလးကုိ ဆုိးေနၿပီ။ ေနာက္ဆုံးအေျခအေနအရ ေဒၚစုကုိလည္း ေထာင္ဒဏ္ ျပန္ခ်ထားလုိက္ၿပီဆုိေတာ့ အပစ္ရပ္အဖြဲ႔ေတြအေပၚမွာလည္း ဖိအားေတြ ပုိၿပီးမ်ားလာႏုိင္လုိ႔ ေကအုိင္အုိကလည္း အသင့္အေနအထားမွာ ရွိေနတယ္။ ေက်းလက္ေဒသက လူေတြက လုံၿခံဳရာကုိ ေျပာင္းေ႐ႊ႕ေနၾကၿပီ” ဟု ၎က ဆက္လက္ေျပာသည္။
ကခ်င္အမ်ဳိးသားလြတ္ေျမာက္ေရးအဖြဲ႔၏ ယခုလက္ရွိအင္အားမွာ တပ္ဖြဲ႔၀င္ (၂) ေသာင္းဝန္းက်င္ရွိေၾကာင္း အေထြေထြ အတြင္းေရးမႈး ေဒါက္တာ လဂ်ာက ေျပာသည္။
ၿပီးခဲ့သည့္ စေနေန႔၌ နအဖစစ္တပ္က မူးယစ္ေဆးဝါး ရွာေဖြေရး အေၾကာင္းျပခ်က္ျဖင့္ ရွမ္းျပည္အေရွ႕ေျမာက္ပုိင္း၊ ကုိးကန္႔ေဒသရွိ ကုိးကန္႔တပ္ဖြဲ႔ဥကၠ႒ ဖုန္က်ားရွင္၏ ေနအိမ္သုိ႔ ဝင္ေရာက္ရွာေဖြရန္ ႀကိဳးစားခဲ့၍ ႏွစ္ဖက္ ပစ္ခတ္လုနီးပါး ျဖစ္ပြားခဲ့သည္။
ကုိးကန္႔အဖြဲ႔ႏွင့္ နအဖစစ္တပ္အၾကား အေျခအေန တင္းမာေနသည့္အတြက္ ေဒသခံအရပ္သား (၁) ေသာင္းေက်ာ္ခန္႔ တ႐ုတ္ျပည္ဘက္ျခမ္းသုိ႔ တိမ္းေရွာင္ေနၾကရၿပီး ေက်းလက္ေဒသမွ ရြာသားမ်ားကလည္း နီးစပ္ရာ ၿမဳိ႕မ်ားသုိ႔ သြားေရာက္ ခုိလႈံေနၾကရေၾကာင္း တ႐ုတ္နယ္စပ္မွ သတင္းမ်ားအရ သိရသည္။
http://www.khitpyaing.org/news/Aug09/120809e.php