Agence France-Presse,
WASHINGTON: The United States on Wednesday denounced a deal between Russia and Myanmar that would create a nuclear research center in the military-led Asian dictatorship ostracized by much of the West.
State Department deputy spokesman Tom Casey said building such a facility in the country formerly known as Burma would be a singularly bad idea, given its abysmal rights record and non-existent nuclear oversight infrastructure.
“Our general sense is that Burma has neither the regulatory or legal frame nor safeguard provisions or other kinds of things that you would expect and want to see for a country to be able to handle successfully a nuclear program of this type,” Casey said.
“We would be concerned about the possibility for accidents, for environmental damage, or for proliferation simply by the possibility of fuel being diverted, stolen or otherwise removed simply because there are no accounting mechanisms or other kinds of security procedures,” the US spokesman said.
Moscow on Tuesday announced the deal providing technical assistance for the research center, which comes as Myanmar remains shunned by most countries in the West and with US-Russia relations at a frosty lowpoint.
“There certainly has to be a heck of a lot more work by the Burmese before, I think, we would feel comfortable … with having a nuclear facility of this type on their soil,” Casey said.
Myanmar is under US and European economic sanctions imposed in response to rights abuses by the country's military dictatorship and the house arrest of 61-year-old democracy icon and Nobel peace laureate Aung San Suu Kyi.
Washington has accused Yangon of torturing and executing its own people, as well as waging war on minorities and looking the other way while drug and human trafficking grows.
The impact of the sanctions has been muted, however, because of countries such as China, India, Russia and Thailand, which are spending billions of dollars to gain a share of Myanmar's vast energy resources.
