Burma taking North Korea’s help to build secret nuclear sites: Wikileaks

LONDON - Scores of secret US diplomatic cables released by the Whistleblower website ‘Wikileaks’ have revealed that witnesses in Burma had claimed to have seen evidence of secret nuclear and missile sites being built in remote jungle areas in Burma.

The Guardian quoted a Burmese officer as saying that he had witnessed North Korean technicians helping to construct an underground facility in foothills more than 300 miles (480km) north-west of Rangoon.

“The North Koreans, aided by Burmese workers, are constructing a concrete-reinforced underground facility that is ‘500 feet from the top of the cave to the top of the hill above’,” the officer said.

A businessman had also reportedly told the embassy in Rangoon that he had seen a large barge carrying reinforced steel bar of a diameter that suggested a project larger than a factory. Other informants included dockworkers, who reported suspicious cargo.

The report is a testimony to rumours that have been circulated sin 2002 that Burma was secretly developing a nuclear bomb with the help of North Korea.

In a cable dated August 2004 titled “Alleged North Korean involvement in missile assembly and underground facility construction in Burma”, witnesses claimed that work is at an early stage and haphazard, but is an alarming development with the risk that Burma could soon join Pakistan, North Korea and possibly Iran in having a nuclear bomb, the paper said.

Earlier senior US defence officials had said that the revelation of North Korea’s new uranium enrichment facility is testimony to the fact that the country is building atomic weapons. (ANI)