'No concrete plans for nuclear reactor in Myanmar'

Kuala Lumpur, July 18: The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said today it had seen no concrete plans for a research reactor in military-ruled Myanmar, despite Russia saying in May that the nuclear watchdog would be involved.

''I haven't seen any plan. At this stage there is more news stories than fact,'' IAEA chief Mohamed ElBaradei told a news conference in Malaysia.

Russia's Rosatom atomic energy agency set international alarm bells ringing two months ago when it announced a deal to build a reactor in the former Burma, regarded by the Washington as an international pariah and ''outpost of tyranny''.

The centre would include a 10 megawatt nuclear reactor with low enriched uranium consisting of less than 20 per cent uranium-235 and would be under IAEA control, Rosatom said.

Myanmar's junta has made no comment on the Rosatom statement.

Russia and China have become major supporters and suppliers of arms to Myanmar since the West imposed sanctions in late 1988.

Last year, the pair vetoed a US-drafted UN Security Council resolution urging Myanmar to stop persecution and release political prisoners.

Myanmar has recently restored ties with North Korea, broken after a North Korean bomb killed South Korean ministers visiting Yangon in 1983. The United States considers North Korea a rogue state and wants it to abandon its nuclear arms programme.

A 2004 research paper by the Australian National University said Myanmar had asked Russia in 2000 for help in starting a civilian nuclear programme but that Moscow backed out of the plan in 2003.

Myanmar's main city, Yangon, has suffered increasingly severe power black outs in recent years, one of the consequences of 45 years of economic mismanagement under military rule.

The military has run Myanmar since 1962, ignoring a 1990 landslide election victory by opposition leader and Nobel Peace Prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi, who has spend much of the interim under house arrest.

REUTERS PD VV1017>