June 8, Bangkok, Thailand — Russia has put a price tag of half a billion dollars on plans to build a nuclear “research” center in Burma, one of the world’s poorest countries, where electricity is a luxury for most inhabitants.

Rangoon’s new diplomatic friend North Korea set a precedent for a destitute country managing to find the means to develop nuclear capabilities. But many Burma watchers take the view that on the issue of nuclear power there is little comparison between the North Korean and Burmese regimes.

The former is run by a dynastic demagogue, while the latter is controlled by self-enriching generals who rarely dip into their pockets to pay for anything.

Given the cost estimate put forward by Atomstroieksport — the agency that handles Russia’s overseas nuclear technology business deals — and the need to find and fund the training of at least 300 Burmese scientists and technicians to help run it, Western diplomatic circles in Southeast Asia are beginning to take informal bets on whether the penny-pinching junta will ever actually proceed with the development.

The Russians have said a nuclear center — ostensibly for medical and agricultural research — would be powered by a 10-megawatt light-water research reactor fuelled by 20 percent enriched uranium 235.

Before the Russians appeared on the scene, there had been occasional speculation that North Korea was secretly trading nuclear technology to the Burmese regime, although nothing has ever been proven.

Suspicion refocused on possible North Korean involvement following two mysterious visits to Burma by North Korean ships recently, the last one docking in late May. Both vessels were claimed by the Burmese authorities to have sought port refuge from storms and to have been searched according to a U.N. Security Council resolution following Pyongyang’s nuclear tests last October.

Few observers believe the storm refuge story.

North Korea and Burma resumed diplomatic relations only in April, although North Korean technicians have been seen in the country for several years.

On the wilder shores of unverifiable claims, a Burmese exile-run news agency, Burma News International, has just published an interview with a Burmese army officer recently returned from Russia who claims the junta is seriously interested in acquiring nuclear weapons — primarily to spook its historic adversary but now main trading partner Thailand.

However, despite the nail-biting anxiety in some quarters over the proposed Russia-Burma nuclear cooperation, not only is it not yet a done deal, it would take at least five years to materialize even if it was, says Atomstroieksport.

The agreement reached in May between the Burmese regime and the Russian Federal Agency for Nuclear Energy, known as Rosatom, was merely an outline proposal. The two sides still have to sit down some time before the end of this year to agree on specific plans and timetables.

“The generals are very good at getting other people to pay,” said Collin Reynolds, a Bangkok commodities analyst.

“Take Burma’s rich natural gas resource as an example: it’s now the country’s biggest source of income but the junta has managed to get foreigners to pay to find it and pipe it.”

The ruling Burmese generals are not only extraordinarily fickle — prone to superstition and following soothsayer advice, which has them changing their minds on a whim — many of them have been sick of late.

Five senior military chiefs have been in the hospital in Singapore for treatment in recent months.

Unofficial reports say two top junta men, Prime Minister Soe Win, and Shwe Mann, the general who is rumored to be in line to take over as paramount leader from the sickly Than Shwe, are both being treated in the city-state for serious disorders.

“If Burma’s leaders continue their secret trips to Singapore for the treatment of undisclosed ailments, rumor and speculation are bound to increase,” said Aung Zaw, an exiled Burmese and editor of The Irrawaddy magazine. “Talk will ultimately turn to a reshuffle within the military’s top ranks.”

Some Western diplomats in Southeast Asia think that the new expansionist Russia of President Vladimir Putin sees in the Rangoon regime a convenient means to gain an influential foothold in a region that is increasingly dominated economically and politically by China.

After Moscow’s offer to help develop nuclear research in Burma, Russian companies have acquired licenses to prospect for gas and oil in the country. Just last month, two companies linked with the obscure Russian republic of Kalmykia began drilling onshore in Burma’s remote northwest.

Most industry analysts consider the drilling a sop to the Burmese, but the timing could not have been better. Both India and South Korea, major investors in Burmese offshore gas, are bickering with the generals over rumored plans to sell China several trillion cubic feet of gas they have found and are producing.

Gas earned $2.16 billion of the $5 billion in export income claimed for Burma by the regime for the 2006-7 fiscal year to March.

Both China and India have been competing to supply armaments to the Burmese military, with the gas in mind.

“It boils down to whether the Russians see sufficient strategic benefit in establishing a significant presence in Burma. They certainly don’t need Burma’s oil and gas,” said one Western diplomat in Bangkok, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

“If the junta is too difficult, the Russians will look elsewhere. Don’t forget they have recently sold sophisticated warplanes to neighboring Malaysia.”

India has recent experience of the Burmese junta crying poverty and getting someone else to foot the bill. The two countries are supposed to be jointly redeveloping Burma’s western port of Sittwe, which was a seaside resort in the British colonial era.

Burma was due to pay only 10 percent of the expected $100 million bill but, just as Indian contractors were preparing to move in, the generals claimed they had no money. New Delhi, desperate to open up the port as access via the River Kaladan to India’s isolated northeastern states, quickly agreed to pick up the whole bill.

Likewise, India wants to “jointly” build road and railway links as part of its so-called Look East economic policy, but the Burmese regime says it is too poor to participate.

New Delhi has begun to show some impatience with Rangoon and hinted just last week that it might review its investment in Burma’s gas resource development if the generals show too much favor to Beijing.

It’s been largely overlooked that Russia was gearing up to build a nuclear research center in Burma in 2002, but the plan was abandoned because the Burmese generals said they couldn’t afford it.

It remains to be seen whether Moscow’s Southeast Asian strategy is important enough to warrant picking up the entire tab for a “joint” nuclear research center.

Graham Lees is a Bangkok-based British journalist and WPR’s Asia contributing editor. He has worked in several countries in East Asia over the last ten years covering regional business and political affairs.