The Pentagon continues to trail a North Korean cargo ship believed headed toward Myanmar, in part because U.S. officials worry that Pyongyang plans to transfer major weapons systems and possibly nuclear technologies to the repressive Southeast Asian country, current and former U.S. officials said.
North Korea has used Myanmar ports and airstrips to transfer arms and contraband to third countries, including Iran, these officials said. Myanmar's military government also has purchased on the open market technologies that are potentially usable in a nuclear program, and North Korean arms companies involved in the nuclear trade have become active in Myanmar, said U.S., Asian and United Nations officials.
North Korean workers, meanwhile, have aided Myanmar's military junta in building underground tunnels near the new capital city of Naypyitaw that could have military applications, say U.S. officials.
Associated Press The U.S. suspects the Kang Nam, shown here in 2006, is ferrying weapons or nuclear materials from North Korea to Myanmar.
U.S. and U.N. officials said there could be nonmilitary reasons to explain Myanmar's actions, and they acknowledge there is no "smoking gun" to back fears of nuclear proliferation inside the Southeast Asian country. But U.S. and Asian diplomats draw strong similarities between the military governments in Pyongyang and Naypyitaw and their efforts to develop weapons of mass destruction as deterrents against U.S. power.
"Given North Korea's nuclear trade to Syria, its attempts to sell Scuds to Myanmar, and its ongoing sales of conventional arms, there's reason to be worried about a WMD relationship," said Michael Green, who tracked Myanmar as a top adviser to former President George W. Bush. In 2004, Myanmar's military junta was in negotiations to buy Scud missile parts from Pyongyang, but the Bush administration convinced Myanmar to back off.
Pentagon officials said Monday that the U.S. Navy continues to track a North Korean cargo ship, in an operation that could serve as a test case for U.N. sanctions enacted last month to try to choke off Pyongyang's weapons trade.
The cargo ship Kang Nam left North Korea on Wednesday and has been trailed by the USS John S. McCain heading south toward the Myanmar coast, according to Pentagon officials. A second U.S. destroyer, the USS McCampbell, is set to pick up the trail with the aid of a P-3 reconnaissance plane.
Pentagon officials said the guided-missile destroyers haven't been given orders to intercept the Kang Nam and hadn't requested permission to do so. "Right now, we're just watching," a Pentagon official said.
North Korea analysts said the cat-and-mouse game highlights a potential weakness in last month's U.N. Security Council resolution concerning North Korea. The measure only allows U.N. member states to inspect vessels with the consent of the nation whose flag the ship is flying. Since North Korea is unlikely to give such permission, U.S. officials acknowledge that they are largely powerless to stop and search the Kang Nam. The resolution also calls for ships seeking port services from U.N. member countries to be refused, but that is unlikely to come up in this case.
U.S. and Asian diplomats have voiced alarm about the growing military and trade relationship between North Korea and Myanmar. The two countries severed diplomatic ties in the 1980s after North Korean agents assassinated South Korean ministers on a state visit. But Myanmar formally opened an embassy in Pyongyang last year.
In August 2008, Washington worked with the Indian government to deny flyover rights to a North Korean Air Koryo jet, which Washington believed was moving missile components to Iran from Myanmar. Officials from one of North Korea's principal arms companies, Nomchongang Trading Co., have also become active inside Myanmar in recent months, former U.S. officials said.
Officials at Myanmar's embassies in Bangkok and Washington, D.C., and at the Ministry of Information in Myanmar didn't respond to questions about the country's alleged nuclear ambitions. North Korea has denied selling nuclear equipment.
Earlier this month, an online magazine of Yale University's Center for the Study of Globalization published photos believed to show tunnels being built under Myanmar's new capital of Naypyitaw with the help of North Korean technicians, ostensibly for military purposes. The accuracy of the photos couldn't be verified.
Several Myanmar citizens, some of them expatriates, have claimed direct knowledge of a nuclear-weapons program, including a reactor under construction near Maymyo, according to Myanmar experts. But the remote area is off-limits to outsiders without government permission and the reports haven't been independently confirmed.
Residents in the area say foreign technicians, including from Russia, have visited the town recently. Russia has acknowledged an agreement with Myanmar to help build a nuclear reactor and do civilian nuclear research, but says no projects have materialized.
Myanmar is a party to the international Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty that went into effect in 1970, and thus has committed not to develop nuclear weapons. It also has reached agreements with the U.N.'s International Atomic Energy Agency to verify that Myanmar isn't diverting nuclear research, material, or technology to make nuclear weapons. Still IAEA officials have privately voiced their concerns about Myanmar's recent purchases of dual-use technologies.
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