Sydney, Aug 2 - Myanmar is building a secret nuclear reactor and plutonium extraction facilities with North Korean help, with the aim of acquiring its first nuclear bomb in five years, a media report has said citing evidence from defectors.

The secret complex, much of it in caves tunnelled into a mountain at Naung Laing in northern Myanmar, runs parallel to a civilian reactor being built at another site by Russia that both the Russians and Burmese say will be put under international safeguards, the Sydney Morning Herald reported on its website Saturday.

Two defectors were extensively interviewed separately over the past two years in Thailand by the Australian National University strategic expert Desmond Ball and a Thai-based Irish-Australian journalist, Phil Thornton, who has followed Myanmar for years, the report said.

One was an officer with a secret nuclear battalion in the Myanmarese Army who was sent to Moscow for two years' training; the other was a former executive of the leading regime business partner, Htoo Trading, who handled nuclear contracts with Russia and North Korea.

Their detailed testimony brings into sharp focus the hints emerging recently from other defector accounts and sightings of North Korean delegations that the Myanmar junta, under growing pressure to democratise, is seeking a deterrent to any foreign 'regime change'.