SCMP-Golden Triangle opium output d

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Subject: SCMP-Golden Triangle opium output drops sharply

Wednesday  January 13  1999

The Mekong Region

Golden Triangle opium output drops sharply

DRUGS by WILLIAM BARNES in Bangkok
Opium production in the Golden Triangle has fallen sharply this season, but
Burma remains the world's prime source of heroin, US officials said
yesterday.

China remains a key export route but traffickers are finding new ways of
moving drugs out of the area, according to the United Nations Drug Control
Programme.

Burma accused the US State Department last month of gross exaggeration in
its annual opium crop estimates for northeast Burma.

The ruling generals have claimed that narcotics production is used as an
"excuse" by the US to throw stones at a Government it does not like.

Rangoon recently released what it described as its first comprehensive
survey for a decade of poppy planting, showing the plant covering 64,000
hectares.

"We had nothing to do with this recent survey and have not seen the report,
but we stick by our figures," a US official said.

The last State Department figures - for 1997 - show that 155,150 hectares
were used for poppy cultivation.

Earlier reports showed that from 1987 until 1989 - a period covering the
formation of the junta - the number of hectares devoted to poppy production
jumped from 92,300 to 142,000 hectares.

The US says opium gum production is thought to have dropped this season
because of severe drought and increased suppression efforts by the regime.

US officials have accused the regime of housing corrupt soldiers, of letting
the economy benefit from laundered drug profits and showing only a
superficial interest in narcotics suppression.

Burma and Thailand yesterday began talks on jointly fighting the drugs trade
along their border, officials said. Leading anti-narcotics agents from both
sides met at the Golden Triangle Hotel in eastern Burma's Tachilek township
to discuss how to stamp out the highly organised drug centres dotting the
Burmese jungles.

Officials from Thailand's Office of Narcotics Control Board said the second
bilateral meeting, sponsored by the UN Drug Control Programme, was aimed at
improving policing efforts in the Golden Triangle.