Chiang Mai (Mizzima) - Bob Kelley, a former weapons inspector with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), says the German government is ‘naïve’ in their claim that exported German equipment sent to Burma has not been used contrary to their stated end use. 

Burmese Major Sai Thein Win stands in front of a German-made machine that he said produced an impeller, which he is holding, for a liquid-fueled rocket engine. According to former weapon's inspector Bob Kelley, the photo 'would seem to be an indication of prohibited use' by Burmese authorities of the machine sold by Deckel Maho Gildemeister. Photo: Courtesy DVB

The German government’s statement of denial comes as exiled Burma activists are increasingly raising concerns that in April Germany, with the assistance of like-minded Austria, will force the European Union to lift the limited economic sanctions the EU has had in place against Burma’s military government.

Last year, Kelley appeared in a Democratic Voice of Burma (DVB) documentary that aired on Al Jazeera, to independently verify the testimony and evidence provided by a high level Burmese military defector who alleged that German equipment was being used for clandestine weapons programmes.  

In the documentary Major Sai Thein Win, a former senior scientist in the Burmese military, testified that the German firm Deckel Maho Gildemeister (DMG) sent engineers to assist with the installation of specialized imported machinery in Burmese military-owned factories.

Sai Thein Win went on to describe how the DMG machinery, which was designed to make precision metal parts, was being used by the Burmese military to manufacture rocket and missile parts. In addition to DMG, the Burmese military had also bought equipment from the German firm Trumpf, including a specialized laser cutting machine designed to cut sheet metal quickly. The military engineer-turned-whistleblower escaped Burma with pages of documents and photographs of German engineers installing the equipment.

Both DMG and Trumpf, the two firms that exported the equipment did so under the pretext that their products would be used for ‘training purposes’.  

Asked about the controversial exports cited by Sai Major Sai Thein Win and what critics have said is Berlin’s weak enforcement of a ban preventing weapons-related equipment being sold to Burma, the German Federal Ministry of Economics and Technology told Mizzima: ‘With regard to the mentioned export to Myanmar and against the backdrop of several already implemented post-shipment controls, German authorities have no indications that the exported goods have been used contrary to their stated end use’.

Burmese Major Sai Thein Win who defected to the West with documents and photographs that he said show evidence of Burma working to produce liquid-fueled rockets. Photo: Courtesy DVB

Responding to the German denial, Kelley told Mizzima: ‘I find this to be a little naïve. There is a published photo, circulated worldwide, of Sai Thein Win standing in front of one of the German machines holding an impeller for a liquid-fueled rocket engine. That would seem to be an indication of prohibited use’.

Kelley added: ‘I have asserted that many of the items shown in other public photos are for processing uranium compounds. I may or may not be correct but there is certainly a community that agrees with me. So it would be prudent to investigate whether the said items are for prohibited nuclear use. Burma has not declared a nuclear programme to the IAEA and Asean and would be in violation of those international obligations if these items are for nuclear use’.

Former international weapons inspector Geoff Forden, a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology also examined the evidence DVB presented of Sai’s impeller.  

Forden was featured in DVB’s documentary warning that if the impeller ‘was put into a single stage rocket with only one engine it could reach maybe 1,000 kilometres’. He also said that if the impeller was used in a ‘first stage of a much larger rocket, with a cluster of four of those engines, then it could reach 3,200 kms or 4,000 kms’. 

While staff from the German embassy in Rangoon inspected the location of factories where the German equipment was being used on three separate occasions in 2007, 2008 and again in 2009, according to Sai, the military regime staged the visits so as to deliberately mislead the German authorities. Sai alleges that to deceive the Germans, military staff at the sites were told to wear civilian clothes during the visits. According to Sai: ‘They are told that those factories are for the training of students, to train students how to use the machine, so they lied’.

North Korean experts are reportedly assisting Burma’s military technicians in the production of tactical ballistic Scud missiles, author and Burma expert Bertil Lintner told Mizzima recently.