Burma Related News – June 24, 2009
Jun 25th, 2009
AP – Myanmar says American main culprit in Suu Kyi caseAP – N. Koreans mass at rally in capital to denounce US
Reuters – U.N. special envoy Gambari to visit Myanmar on Friday
AFP – McCain: US needs tougher China message on Iran, NKorea
AFP – Iconic Obama artist unveils Suu Kyi image
AFP – Myanmar says no information on tracked NKorean ship
Aljazeera.net – Myanmar’s ’secret tunnels’ revealed
NASDAQ – Myanmar Links US Suu Kyi Swimmer To Exile Groups
The Chosun Ilbo – N.Korea ‘Helping Burma with WMD’
FOX News – Pentagon Dismisses as ‘Silliness’ North Korea’s Threat to Wipe Out U.S.
GlobalPost – Opinion: Will Obama stand up to North Korea?
Boston Globe – N. Korea accuses US of trying to start war
The Hindu – Bangladesh to protest in UN against Myanmar’s claim over sea
The Economist – North Korea’s Myanmar links
Monsters and Critics – China executes two for trafficking heroin from Myanmar
The Economist – On the run
The Australian – Fears North Korea in Burma arms deal
Asia Times Online – A UN snub: Two regimes in a tub
Mizzima News – Police Chief says Suu Kyi tardy in contacting authorities
The Irrawaddy – Burma Seeks to Join ‘Axis of Evil’
DVB News – Burma’s military regime: Digging the tunnels
DVB News – Opium poppy cultivation in Burma rises
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Myanmar says American main culprit in Suu Kyi case
AP – Friday, June 26
YANGON, Myanmar (AP) — Myanmar’s national police chief said Thursday that the American man who swam uninvited to the home of opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi was the “main culprit” in the case filed against her.
The comment that could signal a less aggressive stance against the Nobel Peace laureate, who is being tried for violating the terms of her house arrest when John William Yettaw entered her closely guarded lakeside home last month and stayed two days. Yettaw and Suu Kyi’s two women companions are also charged.
If convicted, the 64-year-old faces up to five years in prison. She has been under house arrest for more than 13 of the last 19 years.
Her supporters say the government is almost certain to convict her and claim the regime is using the incident to keep the pro-democracy leader detained through next year’s elections.
Brig. Gen. Khin Yi’s comments at a news conference Thursday marked the first time the government has shifted the spotlight from Suu Kyi. Khin Yi faulted the democracy leader for her lack of cooperation with the security personnel at her home, but alleged that Yettaw was mostly to blame for the incident and that he may have been backed by some groups.
He declined to identify which groups, but noted Yettaw had met many exiled dissidents in neighboring Thailand.
“There could be some individuals and organizations that had supported or directed John William Yettaw, but it is undeniable that Mr. Yettaw is the main culprit who has broken the existing law,” he said.
The briefing, which was attended by lawyers and diplomats, came a day before the scheduled visit of U.N. special envoy Ibrahim Gambari, which may presage a trip by U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon early next month.
Yettaw, 53, of Falcon, Missouri, has pleaded not guilty, and explained in court that he had a dream that Suu Kyi would be assassinated and he had gone to warn her. Family and friends have said that he was working on a book and wished to interview Suu Kyi.
Khin Yi noted that Yettaw was apprehended in May while returning from Suu Kyi’s house along a longer route than the one he had taken during a previous secret visit in November.
“Only Mr. Yettaw and his accomplices will know why he didn’t use the shorter route. Can it be assumed that he deliberately did it to create problems?” said Khin Yi.
He described the American as “an intelligent man and not an unsound person as alleged by some opposition groups.”
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N. Koreans mass at rally in capital to denounce US
By JAE-SOON CHANG, Associated Press Writer – 1 hr 37 mins ago
SEOUL, South Korea (AP) – Tens of thousands of North Koreans shouted slogans to denounce international sanctions at a rally in central Pyongyang on Thursday, as the communist country vowed to enlarge its atomic arsenal and warned of a “fire shower of nuclear retaliation” in the event of a U.S. attack.
The rally marked the 1950 outbreak of the Korean War, which about 5,000 people — mostly American and South Korean veterans and war widows — also commemorated at a ceremony in Seoul.
The anniversary came a day after President Barack Obama extended U.S. economic sanctions against North Korea, saying its arsenal and the risk of proliferation “continue to pose an unusual and extraordinary threat” to the United States, according to the White House Web site.
The U.S. measures are on top of U.N. sanctions imposed on the North over its nuclear test in May. The U.N. sanctions bar member states from buying weapons from or selling them to North Korea. They also ban the sale of luxury goods to the isolated country and financial transactions.
In Pyongyang, an estimated 100,000 packed the main square, shouting “Let’s smash!” in unison while punching clenched fists in the air, footage from APTN in North Korea showed. A placard showed hands crushing a missile with “U.S.” written on it.
The isolated, totalitarian regime often organizes such massive rallies at times of tension with the outside world.
North Korea’s “armed forces will deal an annihilating blow that is unpredictable and unavoidable, to any ’sanctions’ or provocations by the US,” Pak Pyong Jong, first vice chairman of the Pyongyang City People’s Committee, told the crowd.
State-run newspapers ran lengthy editorials accusing the U.S. of invading the country in 1950 and of looking for an opportunity to attack again. The editorials said those actions justified North Korea’s development of atomic bombs to defend itself.
The North “will never give up its nuclear deterrent … and will further strengthen it” as long as Washington remains hostile, Pyongyang’s main Rodong Sinmun newspaper said.
At the rally in Seoul, Minister of Patriots and Veterans Affairs Kim Yang called for North Korea to “abandon all programs related to nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles.”
The new U.N. resolution — passed to punish Pyongyang after its May 25 nuclear test — seeks to clamp down on North Korea’s trading of banned arms and weapons-related material by requiring U.N. member states to request inspections of ships carrying suspicious cargo.
North Korea has said it would consider any interception of its ships a declaration of war.
The U.S. Navy is currently following a North Korean ship suspected of carrying weapons in violation of the resolution, but Pentagon press secretary Geoff Morrell said Wednesday that the U.S. and its allies have not decided whether to contact and request an inspection of the ship.
The Kang Nam left the North Korean port of Nampo a week ago and is believed bound for Myanmar, South Korean and U.S. officials have said. A senior U.S. defense official said Wednesday that the ship had already cleared the Taiwan Strait.
Another U.S. defense official said he tended to doubt reports that the Kang Nam was carrying nuclear-related equipment, saying the information officials had received seemed to indicate the cargo was conventional munitions.
The U.S. officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were discussing intelligence.
Adding to the tensions, anticipation is mounting that the North might test-fire short- or mid-range missiles in the coming days. The North has designated a no-sail zone off its east coast from June 25 to July 10 for military drills.
A senior South Korean government official said the ban is believed connected to North Korean plans to fire short- or mid-range missiles. He spoke on condition of anonymity, citing department policy.
The North has also been holding two U.S. journalists since March. The reporters, Laura Ling and Euna Lee, were sentenced to 12 years of hard labor for illegal border crossing and hostile acts earlier this month.
Ling’s husband, Iain Clayton, said Wednesday that his wife called him on Sunday night and she sounded scared. He also said Ling’s medical condition has deteriorated and Lee has developed a medical problem. Ling reportedly suffers from an ulcer.
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U.N. special envoy Gambari to visit Myanmar on Friday
Thu Jun 25, 2009 6:21pm IST
By Aung Hla Tun
YANGON (Reuters) – A U.N. special envoy to Myanmar will fly to the army-ruled country on Friday, a Foreign Ministry official said, a visit aimed at laying the groundwork for a possible visit by U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon.
The trip will be Ibrahim Gambari’s eighth to Myanmar and he is expected to arrive as the widely-condemned trial of opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi resumes in Yangon.
“He is due to arrive here on Friday morning and as far as I know, he is scheduled to stay here only for two nights,” the Myanmar Foreign Ministry official, who asked not to be identified, told Reuters on Thursday.
An Asian diplomat based in Yangon said the likely purpose of Gambari’s brief trip would be to discuss a visit by Ban next month.
The U.N. chief has previously said he hoped to press the junta to release Suu Kyi and other political prisoners and persuade the regime to commit to meaningful democratic reforms.
Myanmar and U.N. officials said they did not know Gambari’s itinerary.
Gambari last visited the country in February this year, when he met Suu Kyi and Prime Minister Thein Sein.
Suu Kyi’s trial is expected to be adjourned on Friday until a ruling is made on whether to overturn bans on two of the Nobel laureate’s defence witnesses.
The National League for Democracy Party leader is charged with breaching the terms of her house arrest by allowing an American intruder, John Yettaw, to stay at her home for two days.
Suu Kyi, who turned 64 last week, has been held since early May at a guesthouse inside the compound of Yangon’s notorious Insein prison, where she is on trial and faces up to five years in jail if found guilty.
She is charged under Section 22 of a draconian law protecting the state from “subversive elements”, but her lawyers say the charges should be dropped because the legislation is outdated.
Yettaw and two of Suu Kyi’s housemaids are also charged under the same law.
Western diplomats at the United Nations last week said the junta had invited Ban to Myanmar.
The diplomats, speaking under the condition of anonymity, said Ban was concerned the regime would use the visit for propaganda purposes to try to legitimise Suu Kyi’s trial.
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McCain: US needs tougher China message on Iran, NKorea
AFP – Thursday, June 25
WASHINGTON (AFP) — The United States must take a tougher line on China with regard to sanctions on North Korea and aiding US goals in Iran, Republican Senator John McCain said Thursday.
“China has been unhelpful, especially on the issue of North Korea,” said McCain, his party’s 2008 presidential candidate, as he and two other leading senators unveiled plans for legislation to help Iranian dissidents.
“I think it’s time we told the Chinese that an important part of our relationship is how they react as far as North Korea is conncerned, but also as far as Iran is concerned,” the Arizona lawmaker added.
McCain dismissed “toothless” UN sanctions to curb North Korea’s alleged spread of weapons and nuclear know-how, pointing to news reports that a North Korean ship, potentially carrying arms, was headed for Myanmar.
“To follow a ship into a port, as apparently a North Korean ship is going to a port in Myanmar, you’re not going to get anything out of that. I think we all know that,” he said.
“These sanctions that were enacted by the UN, especially on the issue of stopping ships that may be carrying weapons and missiles or nuclear technology, (are) toothless,” said McCain, who underlined that China is “literally the only nation that has any significant influence on North Korean behavior.”
He spoke after Myanmar downplayed media reports about the North Korean ship, saying it expected a vessel from the communist state but that it only carried rice.
The comments came after a US Navy destroyer began tracking the suspect North Korean ship, the Kang Nam 1, under new United Nations sanctions designed to punish Pyongyang over a recent underground nuclear test.
US officials have said that the Kang Nam 1 was being tracked by the Aegis destroyer USS John S. McCain — named for McCain’s father and grandfather — under the UN sanctions and could be headed to Myanmar.
Military-ruled Myanmar’s government-controlled media said it had no information on the ageing Kang Nam 1 and that a separate North Korean cargo ship was due to arrive from India.
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Iconic Obama artist unveils Suu Kyi image
Wed Jun 24, 6:55 pm ET
WASHINGTON (AFP) – The artist behind the iconic image of Barack Obama above the word “HOPE” is now trying to do the same for Myanmar’s democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi, who has been put on trial by the junta.
Los Angeles artist Shepard Fairey depicted a beaming Aung San Suu Kyi with a dove above her heart on top of red rays of light. The phrase “FREEDOM TO LEAD” appears above.
“I created this portrait of Aung San Suu Kyi to raise awareness of her ongoing house arrest and the oppressive nature of the military regime ruling Burma,” Fairey said, using Myanmar’s earlier name.
Aung San Suu Kyi has spent 13 of the past 19 years in detention and is now being held in Yangon’s notorious Insein Prison during her trial for a bizarre incident in which an American man swam to her home.
The Nobel Peace laureate faces up to five years in prison if convicted.
Prominent US human rights activist Jack Healey said he approached Fairey about making a portrait after seeing his role firing up young people to support Obama’s presidential campaign last year.
“I thought he could create an iconic image and do internationally for her what he did nationally for the campaign,” said Healey, head of the Human Rights Action Center.
“I’m interested in getting that youthful reaction. Few people know where Burma is, they don’t know her name — at best they say ‘that lady,’” he said.
Healey said he was fulfilling a promise to help Aung San Suu Kyi when he met her in 1999.
“She is the living symbol in my mind of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. If she takes power, immediately torture disappears, 70,000 child soldiers disappear, the drug trade gets knocked off its feet for a while,” he said.
The inspirational portrait contrasts with some photographs of Aung San Suu Kyi to trickle out in recent years. The 64-year-old opposition leader has appeared sullen and frail in some meetings with UN envoy Ibrahim Gambari, who is returning to Myanmar this week.
Fairey created a poster of Obama tinted in red, white and blue, with the future president staring into the sky above the word “HOPE.”
Fairey has since been engaged in a legal battle with the Associated Press news agency as he based his portrait on one of its photographs of Obama.
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Myanmar says no information on tracked NKorean ship
Wed Jun 24, 1:49 pm ET
YANGON (AFP) – Myanmar’s state media said Wednesday it was expecting the arrival of a rice-bearing North Korean ship but had no news about a vessel being tracked by a US Navy destroyer under new UN sanctions.
The comments came after US officials said a North Korean ship, the Kang Nam 1, was the first to be monitored under a UN resolution designed to punish Pyongyang over a nuclear test and could be headed to Myanmar.
Military-ruled Myanmar’s government-controlled media said a separate cargo ship from North Korea carrying thousands of tonnes of grain was due to arrive from India at the end of the week.
“It is learnt that the MV Dumangang cargo ship from DPRK (North Korea) will arrive in Myanmar about June 27 carrying 8,000 tonnes of rice from Kolkata, India,” state media said.
It said that foreign media had been “spreading reports these days that the Kang Nam cargo ship which left Nampo port, North Korea on June 17 was heading to Myanmar.”
No information was available regarding “this Kang Nam cargo ship” it added.
A US defence official said on Monday that the Kang Nam 1 was being tracked by a US Navy destroyer under the UN sanctions adopted following this month’s underground atomic test by North Korea and could be headed to Myanmar.
The Aegis destroyer USS John S. McCain was continuing to shadow the cargo ship.
South Korea’s YTN television news channel, citing an unnamed intelligence source, reported on Sunday the ship was suspected of carrying missiles or related parts and was heading for Myanmar via Singapore.
The 2,000-tonne ship left the western North Korean port of Nampo on June 17, with Myanmar set as its final destination, YTN said.
Myanmar and hardline communist North Korea, both of which are severely criticised internationally for human rights abuses, restored diplomatic relations in 2007.
Myanmar severed ties with Pyongyang in 1983 following a failed assassination attempt by North Korean agents on then-South Korean president Chun Doo-Hwan during his visit to the Southeast Asian nation.
The bombing killed 17 of Chun’s entourage including cabinet ministers while four Myanmar officials also died.
Myanmar, ruled by the military since 1962, and North Korea have been branded “outposts of tyranny” by the United States, which imposes sanctions on both.
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Thursday, June 25, 2009
Aljazeera.net – Myanmar’s ’secret tunnels’ revealed
(Video Link) http://english.aljazeera.net//
A television channel run by Myanmar exiles in Norway has obtained pictures it says show the construction of a network of secret, bomb-proof tunnels being built by Myanmar’s ruling military with the help of North Korean engineers.
According to the Oslo-based Democratic Voice of Burma (DVB), which agitates against Myanmar’s military government, between 600 and 800 underground facilities and tunnels are in various stages of construction, although their exact purpose remains unclear.
The photographs and videos show extensive underground tunnel complexes large enough for heavy vehicles to drive through, with built-in ventilation facilities and an independent power supply.
Several Myanmar military officials are reported to have been detained following the leaking of the photographs, the DVB said, as the government investigates how details of the sensitive project were leaked.
It added that among those being questioned are associates of Lieutenant General Khin Nyunt, Myanmar’s former intelligence chief.
The tunnel project, reportedly given the codename “Tortoise Shells” by Myanmar’s military, is believed to have been implemented with North Korean involvement between 1996 and 2006.
‘Foreign aid’ used
Citing what it said were government documents on the construction project, the DVB said the cost of the tunnel scheme “has likely run into the billions”.
“Several government budget files also show evidence of foreign aid and loans being used to fund construction work,” the DVB said.
According to documents received by DVB, fibre-optic cables link the tunnel network which is believed to be designed to operate as command centres in the event of an emergency.
Nearly 40 of the 53 underground stations located at the Thai-Myanmar border are believed to have been built since 2004.
Myanmar’s military government began investigating the leaked photographs after they were published in Yale Global Online on June 8.
Disguised
The tunnel network which the DVB says was disguised as a fibre-optic cable installation project had enough food and and room for about 600 people to survive underground for several months.
Bertil Lintner, a Bangkok-based journalist who obtained the first images of the tunnel project, has said evidence points to North Korean officials helping to build the extensive underground installations, with Myanmar giving payment in gold or barter.
Writing in the magazine Yale Global Online, Lintner, a long-time observer of Myanmar said the tunnels were built near Naypyidaw, the country’s new capital 460km north of Yangon, and was linked to provincial capitals across Myanmar.
The project apparently underscores shows an increasingly close relationship between two of Asia’s most internationally isolated states.
It would also mark a sharp upturn in ties between the two countries after Myanmar cut off relations with Pyongyang in 1983 following a North Korean bomb attack in Yangon.
The bomb, planted by North Korean agents, killed more than a dozen visiting South Koreans, including several top government officials.
The agents were reportedly operating on the orders of Kim Jong-il – now North Korea’s leader.
Secret talks
Observers say North Korean and Myanmar officials began secret talks in 1990 followed by more high-level meetings which led to the re-establishment of trade and eventually diplomatic relations in 2007.
News of the secret tunnel project comes as the US navy continues to track a North Korean freighter that reports have said may be carrying weapons, including missiles and missile parts, bound for Myanmar.
The freighter Kang Nam 1, which left port a week ago, is the first North Korean ship to be monitored under new UN sanctions that authorise member states to inspect North Korean sea, air and land cargo.
According to the Thailand-based Irrawaddy magazine, Myanmar has recently stepped up its interest in North Korean military hardware as its looks to upgrade its armed forces in the face of a UN arms embargo.
Impoverished North Korea, itself subject to international sanctions, has long used its arms industry as one of its few sources of income.
According to the Irrawaddy report, a high-level Myanmar military delegation made a week-long secret visit to North Korea in November 2008, reportedly to see Pyongyang’s underground military installations.
The Myanmar delegation also reportedly inspected North Korean arms factories and later officially formalised military co-operation between the two countries.
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Jun 25, 2009 | 11:54AM
NASDAQ – Myanmar Links US Suu Kyi Swimmer To Exile Groups
YANGON (AFP)–Myanmar’s junta said Thursday that a U.S. man on trial for swimming to the house of Aung San Suu Kyi had links with exile groups in Thailand, apparently toughening its stance ahead of a visit by a U.N. envoy.
The military-ruled nation’s police chief for the first time named top dissidents with whom the American, John Yettaw, had allegedly met before making the first of two visits to the pro-democracy movement leader’s lakeside residence.
Suu Kyi is also on trial for allegedly breaching the terms of her house arrest, over what she says were uninvited visits by devout Mormon and former U.S. military veteran Yettaw. Both face up to five years in jail.
The junta rolled out the allegations a day before U.N. troubleshooter Ibrahim Gambari was due to visit Myanmar to lay the groundwork for a planned visit by U.N. Secretary-general Ban Ki-moon.
“According to concrete information, during Mr. Yettaw’s stay in Thailand he met with some people from illegal organizations,” police chief Khin Yee said at a hastily arranged news conference at the interior ministry in Yangon.
He said Yettaw had met activist Bo Kyi, cofounder of leading activist group Assistance Association for Political Prisoners of Burma, while he was staying in the Thai border town of Mae Sot in September-October 2008. Myanmar is also called Burma.
Bo Kyi spent seven years in jail following a failed student uprising in 1988, and is an outspoken critic of Myanmar’s military regime.
The regime last month said that Yettaw’s visits to Suu Kyi’s house were organized by “antigovernment elements,” and that he was a “secret agent or her boyfriend,” but hasn’t given details of the alleged links.
The trial at Yangon’s notorious Insein prison has heard that Yettaw walked through a drain to briefly visit her house in November 2008, and then swam across a lake to the house in May before staying there for two nights.
U.N. chief Ban and Gambari have been trying to persuade Myanmar’s military regime to free all political detainees, including Suu Kyi.
Nobel Peace Prize laureate Suu Kyi has spent 13 of the past 19 years in detention, since the ruling generals refused to recognize the landslide victory of her National League for Democracy party in 1990 elections.
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The Chosun Ilbo – N.Korea ‘Helping Burma with WMD’
June 26, 2009
North Korea is helping Burma with the acquisition of so-called weapons of mass destruction, with the U.S. claiming that the North Korean ship Kangnam is headed for the Southeast Asian country.
The Burmese junta “has bought technologies on the open market that are potentially usable in a nuclear program, and North Korean arms companies involved in the nuclear trade have become active” in Burma, the Wall Street Journal on Tuesday said quoting speculation by U.S., Asian and UN officials.
“North Korea has used [Burmese] ports and airstrips to transfer arms and contraband to third countries, including Iran,” the daily claimed.
It said several Burmese citizens, some of them expatriates, “have claimed direct knowledge of a nuclear weapons program, including a reactor under construction near Maymyo.”
Quoting Yale University’s Center for the Study of Globalization, the paper said relations between the two isolated dictatorships are getting closer to the point where North Korean technicians are working at the construction of underground tunnels connecting basement floors of buildings near the remote new Burmese capital of Naypyitaw.
The daily admitted U.S. and UN officials “acknowledge there is no ’smoking gun’ to back fears of nuclear proliferation inside the Southeast Asian country.” But it added 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.”
It quotes Michael Green, a former senior official the U.S. National Security Council, as speculating that 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.”
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Wednesday, June 24, 2009
FOX News – Pentagon Dismisses as ‘Silliness’ North Korea’s Threat to Wipe Out U.S.
The isolated regime made the threat as a U.S. destroyer shadows a North Korean ship suspected of transporting illicit weapons to Myanmar in what could be the first test of U.N. sanctions passed to punish the nation for an underground nuclear test last month.
The Pentagon shrugged off a threat from North Korea Wednesday to wipe the United States off the map.
“I don’t even know how to respond to that. It’s silliness,” said Pentagon spokesman Geoff Morrell.”For what and with what?”
But even as the spokesman discounted the threat from the communist nation, which reportedly may fire a Taepodong-2 toward Hawaii in early July, he defended Defense
Secretary Robert Gate’s decision to move the THAAD system to Hawaii along with the massive SBX radar system.
“I don’t think he would have deployed that THAAD if he didn’t think there was a reason to do so,” he said.
Tensions have been high since North Korea walked away from nuclear disarmament talks and warned it would fire a long-range missile.
U.S. officials have said it would take at least three to five years for North Korea to pose a real threat to the U.S. west coast.
But a A senior defense official told FOX News earlier Wednesday that the “Tapeodong 2 potentially has the range to reach Hawaii.” He said also he was “very confident” these deployed missile defenses have the capability to take out any missile the North may launch.
The isolated regime made the threat as a U.S. destroyer shadows a North Korean ship suspected of transporting illicit weapons to the military dictatorship in Myanmar in what could be the first test of U.N. sanctions passed to punish the nation for an underground nuclear test last month.
The Kang Nam left the North Korean port of Nampo a week ago with the USS John S. McCain close behind. As the Kang Nam moves South, the McCain has been replaced by the USS McCampbell, which took over monitoring on Tuesday.
The new U.N. Security Council resolution requires member states to seek permission to inspect suspicious cargo. North Korea has said it would consider interception a declaration of war and on Wednesday accused the U.S. of seeking to provoke another Korean War.
“If the U.S. imperialists start another war, the army and people of Korea will … wipe out the aggressors on the globe once and for all,” the official Korean Central News Agency said.
The warning came on the eve of the 59th anniversary of the start of the three-year Korean War, which ended in a truce in 1953, not a peace treaty, leaving the peninsula officially in a state of war.
The U.S. has 28,500 troops in South Korea to protect against an outbreak of hostilities.
FOX News’ Jennifer Griffin and Justin Fishel and The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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GlobalPost – Opinion: Will Obama stand up to North Korea?
As the Kang Nam I chugs toward Myanmar, the new US president has a decision to make.
By Michael Moran – GlobalPost Columnist
Published: June 24, 2009 12:02 ET
NEW YORK — Why is a pair of American warships shadowing a North Korean rust-bucket called the Kang Nam I as it makes its way from the Sea of Japan toward Southeast Asia?
American intelligence officials believe the ship carries illicit arms meant for the military dictatorship in Myanmar. Or, hint anonymous “intelligence sources,” perhaps impoverished, pariah state Myanmar is just a way station for a more nefarious technology transfer.
Sadly, the world probably will never know which is the case.
New United Nations Security Council sanctions passed after North Korea tested its latest nuclear warhead authorized the world’s navies to monitor such traffic. China, which has traditionally protected Pyongyang from the harshest Security Council rebukes, even voted for the sanctions this time, a significant symbolic shift and a victory for U.S. diplomacy.
But Beijing still blocked efforts to authorize boarding parties to inspect suspect North Korean vessels. For that to happen, North Korea would have to give its permission, which is about as likely as Kim Jong Il turning up at the next board meeting of Human Rights Watch.
Such is the infuriating status quo at the U.N. Even a nuclear explosion by a nation that sells its nuclear knowledge to the highest bidder, shoots poorly engineered missiles over their neighbors’ heads and treats its own population like prison inmates could not bring coherent action from the Security Council.
And so Barack Obama finds himself in a familiar position for an American president. Having seen a diplomatic initiative spurned with a nuclear test, he talked tough and did due diligence by working through the existing U.N. channels. And for his pains, he finds himself with less leeway to deal with a ship that might (though it is unlikely) be carrying a nuclear weapon than he had with a bunch of teenaged Somali pirates.
It did not take long for Obama’s domestic enemies to gloat. Smarting from the years in which their own approaches (including diplomatic quarantine, covert action, and preemptive warfare) failed, they were loath to see Obama’s squishy diplomatic initiatives bear fruit. How happy they must now be.
Still, with the exception of the one-third of Americans who constitute the permanently embittered minority, reasonable people should have some pity for Obama at this stage.
Inheritor of a zombie banking sector, a seized-up auto industry, two raging wars, and poisonous hands in Iran and North Korea, he’s had little time to put a stamp of his own on world events.
And the best case scenario for many of these problems is slow, gradual improvement. For some, including Iran, North Korea, and aspects of the global economy, improvement depends less than ever on America’s actions.
George H.W. Bush could shoot for a “new world order.” Bill Clinton’s secretary of state, Madeleine Albright, called America “the indispensible nation.” George W. Bush created the “indefensible nation.” Now Obama must salvage what he can of the goodwill the U.S. took with it out of the 20th century.
Obama’s speech in Cairo invited the Muslim world to end the “cycle of suspicion and discord” that has characterized relations with America since the end of World War II. He recorded a video message for Iran promising a “new beginning” and sent feelers to Russia. Both were spurned.
Truman-like, he sacked a highly decorated commander of the Afghan war and replaced him with Gen. Stanley McChrystal, a counterinsurgency specialist whose own writings on the topic echo the “smart power” approach espoused by the new White House.
Obama promised to keep his promise to get U.S. forces out of Iraq — well, all but 50,000 of them — and he shows signs of reversing America’s disgraceful reputation as a leading global polluter.
All of these made good sense as first steps. Now, each demands a second step which is far, far more difficult to achieve.
With regard to North Korea, that decision may be only hours away. As the Kang Nam chugs toward its destination — probably the Myanmar port city of Thilawa — Obama faces a delicate decision. Should he order the Seventh Fleet to go beyond the U.N. Security Council’s writ and board the Kang Nam? Facing a much more serious (and well-documented) risk, John F. Kennedy did precisely that during the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1961.
Yet to follow that course today runs the risk that the increasingly irrational North will respond with a wild retribution of some kind against South Korea and the American troops based there. The North need not go nuclear to cause thousands of deaths. Within the range of its tens of thousands of artillery tubes on the 37th parallel is the entire city of Seoul and some of the U.S. garrison, too.
“What we’re not going to do is to reward belligerence and provocation in the way that’s been done in the past,” Obama said, a reference to the sand Kim Jong Il kicked in the eyes of both Clinton and Bush after previous American initiatives were spurned.
What then, Mr. President, will North Korea’s reward be this time? It’s a very dangerous moment, indeed.
Michael Moran is Foreign Affairs Columnist for GlobalPost and executive editor of RGE Monitor.
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Boston Globe – N. Korea accuses US of trying to start war
Officials watch for missile firing
By Hyung-Jin Kim, Associated Press / June 25, 2009
SEOUL – North Korea accused Washington of seeking to “provoke a second Korean War’’ as the regime prepared to hold maritime military exercises off the eastern coast.
US and regional authorities were watching closely for signs that North Korea might fire short- or mid-range missiles during the June 25 to July 10 timeframe cited in a no-sail ban for military drills sent to Japan’s Coast Guard.
North Korea had warned previously it would fire a long-range missile as a response to UN Security Council condemnation of an April rocket launch seen as a cover for its ballistic missile technology.
An underground nuclear test last month drew more Security Council action: a resolution seeking to clamp down on North Korea’s trading of banned arms and weapons-related material by requiring UN member states to request inspections of ships carrying suspected cargo.
In a first test of the new resolution, a North Korean ship suspected of transporting illicit weapons was sailing off China’s coast with a US destroyer close behind.
The Kang Nam, which left the North Korean port of Nampo a week ago, is believed bound for Myanmar, South Korean and US officials said.
Myanmar state television downplayed the reports of a possible weapons shipment last evening, saying another North Korean vessel was expected to pick up a load of rice but that the government had no information about the Kang Nam.
A US defense official said he tended to doubt reports that the Kang Nam was carrying nuclear-related equipment, saying the information officials have received seems to indicate the cargo is conventional munitions. The US official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was discussing intelligence.
The United States and its allies have not decided whether to contact and request inspection of the ship, Pentagon press secretary Geoff Morrell said yesterday.
“That’s a decision that will have to be made at some point, and not necessarily just by us or this government,’’ he said at a news conference. “I think we will likely take the decision collectively with our allies and partners.’’
North Korea has said it would consider interception of its ships a declaration of war, and yesterday accused the United States of seeking to start another war.
“If the US imperialists start another war, the army and people of Korea will . . . wipe out the aggressors on the globe once and for all,’’ the official Korean Central News Agency said.
The warning came on the eve of the 59th anniversary of the outbreak of the Korean War.
Meanwhile, North Korean leader Kim Jong Il doled out foreign-made cars to senior intelligence officials to ensure their loyalty to his youngest son when he put the 26-year-old in charge of the country’s powerful spy agency, a report said yesterday.
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Thursday, June 25, 2009
The Hindu – Bangladesh to protest in UN against Myanmar’s claim over sea
Dhaka (PTI): Bangladesh will protest in the UN against Myanmar’s claim to a territorial sea in the Bay of Bengal, especially that of the “baseline” which is needed to delimit its maritime border, officials here said on Thursday.
According to the officials a “baseline” is the line from which the seaward limits of a state’s territorial sea and certain other maritime zones of jurisdiction are measured.
“We have decided to send the protest to the United Nations and Myanmar in next few days,” a foreign ministry official said confirming a New Age report that Dhaka had already finalised its protest note after making in-depth analysis of Myanmar’s claim over the areas of overlapping claims in Bay of Bengal.
He said the letter would be sent before the next round of technical discussions between Dhaka and Yangon for maritime delimitation, which is scheduled to be held in the middle of July.
Yangon submitted the claim to the UN Commission of the Limits of the Continental Shelf, a body formed to deal with the maritime delimitation issue on December 28, 2008 incorporating its new baseline that includes the islands of Preparis and Coco.
Officials in Dhaka said that Myanmar has reviewed its territorial sea and maritime zones law of 1977 to establish its right to the territorial waters in the Bay.
Foreign Minister Dipu Moni earlier this month said maritime boundary between Bangladesh and Myanmar could only be delimited by applying principles of “equity” as practised in other parts of the world.
“As member States of UNCLOS 1982, both states are supposed to delimit their maritime boundaries in accordance with Article 15, 74 and 83 of UNCLOS. We are continuing our discussion and hope to resolve the issue based on the internationally accepted rules, norms and practises,” she told a function recently.
Due to the funnel-like shape of the Bay of Bengal, the claims of Bangladesh, India and Myanmar have apparently overlapped on the issue of the “starting point” on how to mark from the coastline the exclusive economic zone.
Until recently, Bangladesh’s negotiations with Myanmar and India remained stalled due to the lukewarm response from both the countries to the proposal for coming to the negotiation table as well as lack of adequate preparations on the part of Dhaka to handle the issue, admitted officials.
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The Economist – North Korea’s Myanmar links
Cocking a snuke
Jun 25th 2009
From The Economist print edition
Carrots, sticks and now a bullhorn fail to deter North Korea
ONE is an ageing North Korean cargo tub with more than one previous owner and a record of weapons trafficking. The other, shadowing the Kang Nam 1 as it chugs slowly round China’s coast on its way, it is believed, to a port in Myanmar via the Malacca Strait, is an American guided-missile destroyer, bristling with up-to-date radars and weaponry. But it is to be hoped that the captain of the USS McCampbell, reportedly taking over the tracking from a sister ship, the USS John McCain, has at least one old-fashioned bit of naval kit on board: a bullhorn.
The American ships are doing UN-approved duty. Resolution 1874, passed unanimously by the Security Council on June 12th permits the searching of North Korean cargoes on vessels on the high seas suspected of carrying illegal arms shipments. But, in what seems a nose-thumbers’ charter, it requires the flag-owner’s consent, which in this case is highly unlikely to be forthcoming. If the Americans cannot direct the Kang Nam 1 with stern words to a nearby port for a search, they will have to hope a shortage of fuel forces it to dock.
The new restrictions on North Korea limit its weapons imports to small arms, and ban all arms exports, conventional or otherwise. They followed a provocative long-range missile test and last month a defiant claim of the country’s second nuclear test. Puzzlingly, sensors failed to detect telltale gases that usually leak out within days of such a test, but that could be because North Korea is, troublingly, better at testing small nuclear warheads deep underground than observers had guessed.
The regime’s ailing boss, Kim Jong Il, is preparing more fireworks: perhaps another nuclear test; almost certainly short- and medium-range missile firings. A new launch-pad being prepared in the west of the country would allow testing of intercontinental-range rockets to the south, instead of as now across the Pacific towards America, which has threatened to shoot down any that appear threatening.
Where will all this lead? China and Russia, angered at Mr Kim’s nuclear antics, agreed to support sanctions on his illicit weapons trade, but want six-party negotiations that also include America, South Korea and Japan, as well as North Korea, to resume. North Korea says it will come to the table as a “proud nuclear power” with no intention of giving up its bombs. “Delusional” is how one senior American official describes Mr Kim’s demand to be accepted as a nuclear power; South Korea and Japan concur.
Meanwhile the fear is that Mr Kim will resume (if he ever stopped) helping others with their nuclear work. Financial records show that Mr Kim co-operated with a network run by a disgraced former Pakistani scientist, Abdul Qadeer Khan, to help supply Libya with nuclear material for uranium-enrichment work before the country abandoned its weapons effort. A nuclear reactor Mr Kim was secretly building for Syria, one ideally sized for producing plutonium for bombs, was destroyed by Israel in 2007 just before its completion.
Some reports say the Kang Nam 1 is carrying missile parts; others that it is shipping mostly small arms to the junta in Myanmar. Mr Kim has sometimes used Myanmar to trans-ship missile parts, and who knows what else, to Iran. But Myanmar itself is a headache now, too. Russia has agreed to build it a small nuclear-research reactor. The worry is this nuclear toing and froing could disguise another joint venture, with North Korea: the secret building of a reactor like both Syria’s and the one Mr Kim has used to produce plutonium for his own weapons tests.
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Monsters and Critics – China executes two for trafficking heroin from Myanmar
Asia-Pacific News
Jun 25, 2009, 4:52 GMT
Beijing – A court in north-eastern China Thursday said it had executed two men convicted of leading a gang which smuggled heroin from Myanmar, state media reported.
Liu Fuying and Sun Yulong were convicted in China’s Liaoning province last August of trafficking more than 8 kilograms of heroin on several trips from Myanmar since 2002, the official Xinhua news agency quoted court officials as saying.
The two men were executed last month after the Supreme People’s Court approved the death sentences against them, the agency said.
It quoted court official Wu Yanjun as saying drug trafficking by ‘more and more professional’ gangs was increasing in north-eastern China, including the smuggling of drugs from China to North and South Korea.
Liaoning courts handled 1,054 drug-related cases involving 1,797 people over the past 12 months, up 60 per cent year-on-year, the agency said.
The report of the two executions came one day before the UN-sponsored international anti-drugs day on Friday, around which many Chinese cities and provinces normally announce drug-related sentences.
China keeps the number of executions a state secret, but the US-based Dui Hua Foundation has estimated that at least 5,000 people have been executed annually in recent years, more than in the rest of the world put together.
China has limited the use of death sentences in recent years but retains it for 68 offences, including drug trafficking, serious corruption and other non-violent crimes.
Legal analysts put China’s annual number of executions at more than 10,000 annually before 1997, when it abolished capital punishment for theft.
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Myanmar’s beleaguered Karens
The Economist – On the run
Jun 25th 2009 | BANGKOK
From The Economist print edition
A brutal offensive brings Asia’s longest civil war closer to its end
GOVERNMENT troops advance. Terrorised villagers flee. Rebels fight back. For six decades this has been the rhythm of warfare in eastern Myanmar, where ethnic-Karen insurgents fight the ruling junta. The latest offensive by Myanmar’s army began in June and is unusual not in its ferocity but in its timing, in the wet season. The army, backed by a breakaway Karen militia, has managed to overrun several bases of the Karen National Liberation Army (KNLA). Since June 2nd some 4,000 civilians have fled the fighting and crossed the border into Thailand. There is talk of the rebels’ Alamo moment.
The reasons for the junta’s sudden haste are typically murky. It is preparing for parliamentary elections next year, the first since an annulled 1990 poll, and wants around 17 ethnic rebel groups that have signed ceasefires to take part. The Karen National Union (KNU), the movement’s political wing, is a holdout. The generals, who want to consolidate power and neutralise armed threats, have proposed turning ethnic insurgents into border guards, under their command. They may reckon that the KNU can be similarly corralled. But a crushing military defeat would do just fine.
The offensive also appears timed to divert attention from the trial of Aung San Suu Kyi, the detained opposition leader. Thailand’s foreign minister, Kasit Piromya, has been more strident than most in publicly dressing down the junta about this farce, which is due to resume on June 26th. Thai diplomats suspect that its prickly neighbour is stirring trouble on the border as a poke in the eye.
The KNLA serves as a useful buffer for Thailand’s army. But Thai support for the Karens’ lonely struggle may be waning. So far, villagers fleeing Myanmar’s marauding troops have not been turned back. However, a wider collapse of the KNLA might well trigger a larger exodus into Thailand. Some 140,000 refugees, mostly Karens and Karennis, another ethnic group, are already confined to Thai camps built in the 1980s which have a depressing air of permanence. Some activists are critical of the faction-ridden KNU and its pandering to Christian aid groups. Certainly, bibles and workshops have not freed the Karen from Myanmar’s yoke. It is hard to see what could.
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The Australian – Fears North Korea in Burma arms deal
Correspondents in Seoul | June 24, 2009
Article from: The Australian
A NORTH Korean ship suspected of carrying illicit weapons cruised through waters off Shanghai yesterday en route to Burma, as regional military officials and a US destroyer kept a close eye on the vessel.
Washington’s top military commander in South Korea, meanwhile, warned that the communist regime is bolstering its guerilla warfare capacity.
General Walter Sharp, who commands the 28,500 US troops in South Korea, said the North could employ roadside bombs and other guerilla tactics if fighting breaks out again on the Korean peninsula. The two Koreas technically remain at war because their three-year conflict ended in a truce, not a peace treaty, in 1953.
North Korea is believed to have begun boosting its urban, night-time and special operation capabilities in the wake of the US-led war in Iraq, South Korea’s Defence Ministry said. After the US invasion of Iraq, North Korea claimed it would be the next target.
With 1.2 million troops, North Korea’s army is one of the world’s largest. About 180,000 are special operation forces.
Last Wednesday, a North Korean-flagged vessel left the port of Nampo and was being trailed by a US destroyer.
It is the first ship being monitored under the UN sanctions imposed earlier this month following North Korea’s defiant underground nuclear test last month.
The new resolution seeks to strengthen efforts to stop North Korea from developing its nuclear and missile programs and selling its technology.
The Kang Nam, accused of transporting illicit goods in the past, is believed to be carrying banned small arms to Burma, a South Korean intelligence official said on Monday.
However, a high-seas interception – a move North Korea has said it would consider an act of war – is unlikely.
The resolution calls on UN member states to inspect North Korean vessels if they have “reasonable grounds” to believe that its cargo contains banned weapons or materials. But it must first get the consent of the nation whose flag the ship is flying – in this case, North Korea’s.
The North is unlikely to allow any inspection of its cargo.
If Pyongyang refuses, authorities must direct the vessel to a port. UN members have been ordered not to provided suspected ships with services such as fuel.
In Beijing, Foreign Ministry spokesman Qin Gang said China will “strictly observe” and implement the resolution. He urged other nations to also heed the UN guidelines.
“Under the current circumstances, we call upon all parties to refrain from acts that might escalate the tension,” he said yesterday.
Singapore, the world’s busiest port and a top refueling center, said officials would “act appropriately” if asked to confront a North Korean ship believed to be carrying banned cargo.
“Singapore takes seriously the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, their means of delivery and related materials,” a Foreign Affairs Ministry spokesman said yesterday. “If the allegation is true, Singapore will act appropriately.”
The South Korean broadcaster YTN said the ship was traveling in waters 370km southeast of Shanghai at a speed of about 18.5km/h.
The Kang Nam is expected to dock at Burma’s Thilawa port, 30km south of Rangoon, in the next few days, according to the Irrawaddy, an online magazine operated by independent exiled journalists from Burma, citing an unidentified port official.
North Korea is believed to have sold guns, artillery and other small weapons to Burma, said Kim Jin-moo, an analyst at Seoul’s state-run Korea Institute for Defence Analyses.
An American destroyer, the USS John S. McCain, is relatively close to the North Korean vessel but had no orders to intercept it, a senior military official said last week.
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Jun 26, 2009
Asia Times Online – A UN snub: Two regimes in a tub
By Donald Kirk
LONDON – The magical mystery tour of a decrepit North Korean tub named the Kang Nam I around the rim of China and Southeast Asia exposes one of the more curious alliances of convenience in the international arms trade.
Whatever the Kang Nam is carrying, its destination looks like Myanmar, whose budding rapport with North Korea was rudely interrupted in October 1983 when three North Korean commandos planted a bomb in a plot to assassinate the South Korean president, General Chun Doo-hwan, on a state visit to Rangoon, now Yangon. Chun escaped, but 18 South Korean officials and three local citizens were killed. Myanmar and North Korea were not on speaking terms for years.
Such are the ironies of diplomacy, however, that Myanmar and North Korea resolved to forget the past and become fast friends again when their leaders realized they had much in common. North Korea this week is raising the stakes, almost daring the US Navy to board the Kang Nam while claiming the US is looking for a pretext for “a second Korean war”.
Pyongyang’s party newspaper, Rodong Sinmun, in a particularly pyrotechnic display of rhetoric, has promised “fiery showers of nuclear retaliation” in response to attack. The newspaper likened the meeting between US President Barack Obama and South Korea’s President Lee Myung-bak in Washington on June 16 to “a disgusting kiss between master and servant”.
Obama at the summit outraged North Korea by signing off on a joint statement affirming for the first time in writing the US commitment to a “nuclear umbrella” over the Korean peninsula. On Wednesday, renewing US sanctions on North Korea, he warned “the risk of the proliferation of weapons-usable fissile material on the Korean Peninsula constitutes a continuing unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security and foreign policy of the United States”.
Against this background, North Korea is staging naval exercises off its east coast after warning shipping to stay away until July 10. The warning in turn suggests plans for more tests of mid- and short-range missiles, and another test of a long-range Taepodong-2 similar to the one that flew on a 3,200-kilometer trajectory toward Hawaii on April 5.
The Kang Nam sailed out of the port of Nampo on North Korea’s west coast and a senior US defense official told the Associated Press on Wednesday that it had already cleared the Taiwan Strait. The voyage might not have created such consternation were it not for rising tensions in which the North has said that stopping one of its vessels would be a “declaration of war” to which it would respond militarily.
In that context, the voyage of the Kang Nam challenges two American-led efforts to stifle nuclear proliferation.
The first is the Proliferation Security Initiative (PSI), a US-inspired program under which 15 or 16 “core” countries have the theoretical power to stop and board ships on the high seas to see if they’re carrying weapons of mass destruction, components or the missiles with which to fire them. PSI also includes scores of observer members who cooperate to the extent of sharing information.
The second revolves around the United Nations Security Council resolutions to which North Korea objects mightily. These resolutions, adopted after North Korea’s first nuclear test in October 2006, and again after the second nuclear test on May 25, provide “sanctions” to halt such shipments, to stop the export to North Korea of critical products, including arms, and to cut off international financial transactions in support of such business.
The temptation to check out what’s on the Kang Nam is almost palpable considering the tantalizing questions that only a search would answer. A look at its cargo would provide insights into a relationship that supports the military aims of two of Asia’s most sordid dictatorships, bonded in hostility and distrust of the outside world and suppression of foes at home.
North Korean leader Kim Jong-il’s “military first” policy far surpasses in intensity the kinship that South Korea’s Chun Doo-hwan had hoped to cultivate with Myanmar’s military leaders before setting forth on his ill-fated expedition in 1983.
North Korea and Myanmar not only adhere to military rule but also entertain nuclear ambitions that South Korea has sublimated while allied with the US.
By the time North Korea and Myanmar opened ties in April 2007, North Korea was a nuclear power, Myanmar aspired to become one, and Pyongyang was providing Myanmar with arms, ammunition, missiles – and nuclear expertise.
Myanmar technicians were going to North Korea for training while Myanmar served as a useful transhipment point for North Korean military cargo on the way to clients in the Middle East by air as well as sea. In that context, the voyage of the Kang Nam raises the deepest suspicions.
“The suggestion that it is carrying missile equipment to Burma [Myanmar] ring true,” said Mark Fitzpatrick, senior fellow for non-proliferation with the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London. Fitzpatrick, a former US State Department official, cited “the recent uptake in sightings of North Koreans in Burma” as well as “NK-Burma missile discussions” confirmed around four years ago.
“Much of the chatter in Burmese emigre circles has to do with rumors of NK nuclear cooperation with Burma,” he said in e-mailed response to questions.
How much credence to give such talk, however, is another matter. “A nuclear connection is certainly conceivable,” said Fitzpatrick, “but a missile connection is more likely.” Then again, he noted, it was always possible “the ship is sending conventional arms or tunneling equipment to Burma”.
In fact, tunneling is one field in which North Korea has developed a high level of expertise. North Korean engineering is responsible for digging tunnels under the demilitarized zone between North and South Korea, for excavating numerous tunnels on roads through mountainous regions elsewhere and for digging deep excavations in which to hide arms and ammunition and conduct nuclear tests. North Korea in recent years is known to have shared tunneling equipment and expertise with Myanmar and other client states. (Please see Myanmar and North Korea share a tunnel vision, Asia Times Online, July 19, 2006.)
But when and how will intelligence analysts discover what the Kang Nam, with a dead weight of just 2,035 tons, is carrying? The load is less than massive, but the ship will still have to refuel before getting to Myanmar. Therein lies the best, if not the only hope, for fathoming the mystery of what’s on board.
“With regard to the route, it stands to reason that the vessel would have to call in one or more ports along the way,” said Fitzpatrick, adding that “Singapore is a natural port of call
” and “it would be far easier to demand an inspection once the vessel is in a port.” If the captain were to refuse, Fitzpatrick noted, “the port can refuse services, or impose restrictions based on customs or other regulations.”
Until then, it appears quite unlikely that the American destroyer USS John McCain, tailing the Kang Nam, will not do much more than log its every move while looking for clues to its mission and cargo as US Navy planes patrol the area.
The McCain is an Aegis-class vessel equipped with the latest missiles and technology for spotting and firing on targets. Still, all that weaponry will be for naught in the cat-and-mouse game of tracking an aging vessel that can travel at far less than half the speed of the McCain and has no weaponry other than whatever small arms its crew is carrying.
The greatest deterrent to stopping and boarding the vessel undoubtedly is the reluctance of China to support an incident that could add to the sense of crisis hanging over the Korean Peninsula. China’s Foreign Ministry has come up with a rationale that shows how little the UN sanctions really mean in a crunch.
Professing support for the Security Council resolution, a spokesman observed that “ship inspections should be enforced according to relevant international and domestic law” with “ample evidence and proper cause” – meaning, not at all.
Such verbiage will not diminish concerns that the Kang Nam’s cargo may not be for Myanmar at all but for the Middle East, possibly Iran or Syria.
North Korean planes are believed to have carried critical cargo to the Middle East via Russia and possibly China and Pakistan, but new UN sanctions, and US pressure, may make those options more difficult. Myanmar seems willing to provide the facilities for offloading cargo from ships and loading it onto planes bound elsewhere.
PSI scored its only real success in 2008, when India refused to grant overflight rights to a North Korean Ilyushin transport plane that was about to take off from Mandalay for Iran with components for missiles. That success was all the more notable considering that India is not a core PSI member.
Under the circumstances, it’s hard to take seriously Myanmar’s claim of no knowledge of a plan for the Kang Nam to go there. Then again, it’s possible the fuss is for nothing. When the Kang Nam docked three years ago in Hong Kong, an inspection revealed nothing on board. The failed search raised the question, what was it going to pick up and bring back to North Korea?
Journalist Donald Kirk has been covering Korea – and the confrontation of forces in Northeast Asia – for more than 30 years.
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Mizzima News – Police Chief says Suu Kyi tardy in contacting authorities
Thursday, 25 June 2009 17:51
New Delhi (mizzima) – Burma’s Chief of Police, Khin Yi, on Thursday accused opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi for having not adequately informed police of the details of the first visit by American John William Yettaw, who is currently standing trial for his visits to the detained pro-democracy leader’s Rangoon residence.
Khin Yi, during a rare press briefing at the Drug Elimination Museum in Rangoon’s Kamayut Township, told journalists and diplomats that the detained Nobel Peace Laureate had not informed concerned authorities in a timely manner as to the details of the first visit by Yettaw in November 2008.
As National League for Democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi only informed the authorities of the visit four days after the event on December 4, 2008, it was difficult for authorities to trace the incident and thus hampered attempts to uncover the truth, Khin Yi added.
Rejecting rumors that the accused suffers from a mental illness, Khin Yi said Yettaw is instead a highly intellectual person.
Aung San Suu Kyi, on trial in Insein prison along with Yettaw and two live-in party members, is charged with breaching her detention regulations by accepting Yettaw, who allegedly swam approximately two kilometers across Inya Lake, into her home and providing him with food and shelter. If found guilty, she could face up to five years imprisonment.
But the pro-democracy leader has pleaded ‘not guilty’ to the charges, saying the security around her home is instead responsible for the break-in.
Khin Yi, during the briefing, said the government believes that Yettaw’s visit was pre-planned by a group working behind the scenes, but failed to identify the group, saying only that authorities are still working on the case.
But opposition groups have in turn accused the junta of using the incident as a pretext to continue detaining the Nobel Peace Laureate in order to keep her out of the public realm in the run-up to the planned 2010 general election.
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The Irrawaddy – Burma Seeks to Join ‘Axis of Evil’
By HTET AUNG, Thursday, June 25, 2009
A 2008 document leaked from Burma’s Foreign Ministry indicates that the junta has attempted to create an offensive in its diplomatic battle with the United States and its allies by forming an alliance with the Islamic Republic of Iran.
The leaked document was obtained recently by The Irrawaddy. It is written in Burmese and is categorized as “secret.” It was submitted to the cabinet on August 12, 2008, and outlines the details of Foreign Minister Nyan Win’s talks during the 15th Ministerial Conference of the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) held in Tehran, the capital of Iran, on July 27-30, 2008.
According to the document, Nyan Win visited the Iranian Foreign Ministry to meet Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki on the sidelines of the conference, where he requested that Iran support Burma in its fight against the Western powers.
“In the Asean Regional Forum held last week, the US and its allies criticized us,” Nyan Win reportedly told Mottaki. “The US, Britain, France and their Western allies always try to sabotage our country.
“The United Nations Security Council (UNSC) discussed the Burma issue on July 24 [2008], but we are lucky because our friend Vietnam is chairperson of the council [for that month] and we requested Vietnam’s foreign minister to stand on our side,” explained Nyan Win. “Vietnam did as requested and now I would like to request you to stand on our side as Asean always does.”
The Burmese Foreign Ministry delegation was accompanied by Ambassador Kyi Thein and his First Secretary Aung Kyaw Moe who are heads of the Burmese Embassy to India as well as its mission to Iran.
In exchange for Iran’s diplomatic support for Burma, Nyan Win reportedly offered Iran its official support in Iran’s ongoing dispute with the UNSC regarding the Islamic republic’s nuclear program.
“We therefore support the view that every state has the right to use nuclear energy for peaceful purposes in accordance with the NPT (Non-Proliferation Treaty) and under the strict supervision of the IAEA’s (International Atomic Energy Agency’s) safeguards,” said Nyan Win in his policy statement to the conference on July 29, 2008.
On the same day, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad called for developing nations to unite in the fight against the bias of the UNSC, which “only serves the big powers’ interests,” reported Burmese state-run The New Light of Myanmar on July 30.
The NAM document was leaked at a time when the Burmese junta’s nuclear ambitions have reemerged in the news headlines in association with its rapidly growing military relationship with North Korea.
A recent report by Swedish journalist Bertil Lintner on Yale Global online detailed the junta’s massive military project in secretly building a network of underground tunnels with the help of North Korean technicians. However, the report did not identify whether these tunnel projects were related to the Burmese generals’ nuclear ambitions.
The Irrawaddy also uncovered an extensive report on Gen Thura Shwe Man, the junta’s third most powerful man and chief of staff of the army, navy and air force, who signed an agreement with his North Korean counterpart to formalize military cooperation between Burma and North Korea.
Burma’s move toward a relationship with North Korea and Iran would appear to underline a statement by former US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice in 2005 when she classified Burma, Iran and North Korea as being among countries that are “outposts of tyranny.”
“To be sure, in our world, there remain outposts of tyranny, and America stands with oppressed people on every continent, in Cuba, and Burma, and North Korea, and Iran, and Belarus, and Zimbabwe,” said Rice in the US Senate session which questioned her foreign policy just before her official appointment as Secretary of the State in January 2005.
According to the leaked document, another step by Nyan Win on the sidelines of the 2008 NAM conference was his search for support from Turkish Foreign Minister Ali Babacan at a time when Turkey was preparing to compete with Ireland and Austria for the two non-permanent seats at the UNSC for the 2009–10 term.
Ali Babacan reportedly requested Nyan Win to vote for Turkey at the meeting. The Burmese foreign minister reportedly responded by requesting that the Turkish minister stand on Burma’s side if the UNSC raised the Burma issue in exchange for Burma’s vote for Turkey’s seat at the UNSC.
The two ministers apparently reached an agreement after Nyan Win promised the Turkish minister that he would instruct Burmese representatives at the UN in New York to vote for Turkey, according to the document. Turkey is now one of the UNSC’s non-permanent members.
Step by step, the Burmese regime appears to be bracing itself against external threats. The network of underground tunnels at Naypyidaw is proof of this.
However, in its attempts to lure Iran and North Korea into a pact, Burma is creating instability in the region and setting off alarm bells all over the world.
The author is an independent researcher in International Development Studies at Chulalongkorn University in Bangkok.
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DVB News – Burma’s military regime: Digging the tunnels
June 24, 2009 (DVB)–New images have emerged that show North Korean and other foreign advisers in Burma consulting with officials on what now appears to be an extensive network of some 800 underground tunnels across much of the country.
While rife government corruption and uneven development in Burma yesterday awarded Burma a spot at the bottom of Foreign Policy magazine’s Failed States Index, billions of US dollars are now known to have been channeled by the Burmese government into building the tunnels.
DVB has been tracking the development of the tunnels and underground installations in Burma for a number of years. This is the first in a series of DVB stories revealing the secretive tunnel project.
Evidence has been obtained that shows between 600 and 800 tunnels in various stages of construction, with work on some sections dating as far back as 1996.
Photographs of a number of tunnel sites clearly show North Korean advisers present. In one photograph of a work site at Pyinmanar Taung Nyo, dated 29 May 2006, North Korean advisers are seen training Burmese soldiers and technicians in tunnel construction.
Several government budget files also show evidence of foreign aid and loans being used to fund construction work.
A number of senior Burmese officials have been dismissed in recent days following the first publication of DVB’s tunnel photographs in the Yale Global Online on 8 June.
The military government has launched an investigation into how details of such a sensitive project were leaked, with associates of former intelligence chief Lieutenant General Khin Nyunt being questioned by police.
Further intelligence documents obtained by DVB show that the tunnel system is being disguised by the government as a fibre optic cable installation project.
Leaked engineering designs show, however, that some sections of the tunnels are wide enough to allow trucks to enter and leave. There is also storage space for food and weaponry, and separate rooms that would hold around 600 personnel for several months.
The documents also reveal plans to hold large rockets and satellite communication command centers inside the tunnels.
Although the financially weak Burmese government is thought to allocate some 40 per cent of its budget for military purposes, the tunnel project over the course of 13 years has likely run into the billions.
Some observers have speculated that the abrupt hike in fuel prices that sparked the September 2007 protests may have been a prelude to securing extra capital for the project.
Likewise, Burma struck a deal with China in April this year to siphon its vast offshore natural gas reserves to China’s energy hungry population, a venture that will have given the tunnel project an important boost.
Speculation that Burma is trading in military hardware with North Korea was reinforced on Monday with reports that a North Korean freighter ship believed to be carrying arms was headed in the direction of Burma.
Despite only reestablishing diplomatic ties in 2007, following North Korea’s bombing of a South Korean delegation in Rangoon in 1983, the two countries share characteristics that make them obvious allies.
According to journalist and expert on North Korea-Burma relations, Bertil Lintner, both countries have “absolutely no interest” in supporting respective UN arms embargoes.
Indeed, North Korea is one of the few countries willing to continue military trade with the pariah state, with “even China…reluctant to sell certain types of equipment to Burma”, according to Lintner.
Perhaps most worryingly for countries outside of Burma’s friendship group, it has renewed an alliance with a country that is rapidly becoming the icon of a new generation of ‘rogue states’ threatening nuclear warfare.
With this in mind, speculation will likely start to circulate as to whether the tunnel network could be linked to rumours that Burma is mining uranium ore, a key ingredient for nuclear fission. No evidence has yet appeared to verify this, however.
In our next story we will reveal the purpose of these tunnels, foreign involvement in the project and what is inside the tunnels.
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DVB News – Opium poppy cultivation in Burma rises
June 25, 2009 (DVB)–Burma remains the world’s second largest source of opium, according to a UN report released yesterday that found a slight rise in opium poppy cultivation across Burma but decreasing levels worldwide.
While global markets for most illicit are either steady or in decline, the World Drug Report 2009 reported an increase in production and use of synthetic drugs in the developing world.
Burma remains the world’s second biggest producer of opium behind Afghanistan. While levels of poppy cultivation for opium are a fraction of those of a decade ago, the market is still healthy.
Globally, there are thought to be around 189,000 hectares for cultivation, with 28,500 of those in Burma. Media reports of opium production in Afghanistan often link the trade to the presence of Taliban units, despite there being an increase in production since the US-led invasion to topple the Taliban in 2001.
In Burma, opium production, last year measured at around 4000 metric tons, is often tied to increasing militarization throughout the country, most notably in the country’s eastern Shan state.
In the past decade the government has lumped the army with a self-reliance policy, in which troops must be responsible for their own equipment and food, despite receiving meager wages.
Lower-ranking soldiers are often required to contribute up to 10,000 kyat ($US10) to their unit, despite being on a salary of around 30,000 kyat ($US30) a month.
“This has forced the army units to get involved in all sorts of illegal trade business, including drugs,” said an expert on Burma’s opium trade, Khuensai Jaiyen.
Burma’s aggressive expansion of its military, coupled with the self-reliance policy, compounds a problem for once self-sufficient villagers in Shan state who now are forced to provide food for troops.
The increase from 25 battalions in Shan state a decade ago to over 160 has “caused great burden on the population… [making] it difficult to survive and difficult to feed the family,” said Khuensai Jaiyen.
“If we don’t grow opium, how can we get enough food? If I don’t want to grow opium, I have to come into Thailand and send money back to my family to feed itself for a whole year but also the army.”
Although cultivation of poppies may have increased in recent years, output of opium has decreased. Khuensai Jaiyen warns, however, to exercise caution about praising the ruling State Peace and Development Council’s (SPDC) alleged eradication programmes.
“Some people might congratulate the SPDC; you had better congratulate the weather instead of the SPDC. Last year the downpour had destroyed, in some places, 60 percent of the fields,” he said.
Reporting by Francis Wade
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