"It has long been suspected that North Korea supplies Burma with weapons. But recent unconfirmed reports that the two secretive states are negotiating a nuclear deal are unsettling... Bilateral relations between Burma and North Korea were severed in 1983, after Pyongyang sent agents to Rangoon to conduct a terrorist attack against a visiting South Korean presidential delegation. Diplomatic ties have still not been restored. Over the past few years, however, these two economically stricken but highly militarized pariah states seem to have found some common ground. Depending on how it develops, this relationship could extend beyond mutual support to have wider strategic implications. Reports that the Rangoon regime has sought to acquire strategic weapon systems like submarines and ballistic missiles from Pyongyang have aroused concern in regional capitals and in Washington. There have even been suggestions that North Korea is secretly helping Burma to build a nuclear reactor, raising the spectre of a future atomic weapons program that could be used by Rangoon as a bargaining chip against the United States..."