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SCMP-Interpol 'naive to trust junta



Subject: SCMP-Interpol 'naive to trust junta on drugs'

Saturday  February 27  1999
Burma

Interpol 'naive to trust junta on drugs'

WILLIAM BARNES in Bangkok
Critics of the military Government yesterday accused Interpol of naivety
after it praised the regime's drug eradication efforts.

They said the international police organisation had fallen foolishly into
the trap of rewarding the junta for its feeble and half-hearted moves
against "world-class criminals".

Interpol split the international community by holding a heroin conference in
Rangoon.

The United States and most European countries withdrew from the meeting,
which ended yesterday.

"It's the Burmese military itself that stands in the way of drug
eradication," said Aung Naing Oo, foreign affairs spokesman for the All
Burma Students' Democratic Front.

Paul Higdon, the director of Interpol's criminal intelligence unit, said he
was confident the Burmese authorities had "the political will" to destroy
most poppy fields.

Rangoon is poised to embark on what it describes as a 15-year programme to
wipe out poppy production.

"It is not a programme that has been put together with chewing gum and
baling wire. I am confident it will succeed," Mr Higdon argued.

Mr Aung Naing Oo said the Interpol director "is obviously someone with very
little understanding of how the country works".

And Maureen Aung-Thwin, the director of the Open Society Institute's Burma
Project, said such comments were "extremely naive".

One Western diplomat in Rangoon said Interpol had provided a platform for
junta officials to say "ludicrous things like amphetamines are being planted
on the country by foreigners".

He pointed out that the military's claims that it had destroyed US$200
million (HK$1.5 billion) worth of drugs during a burning ceremony on
Thursday was a wild overestimate. "On the streets of New York maybe, not in
Burma," he said.

Expert observers also doubt the regime's claim that its eradication efforts
reduced the 1998 opium crop to 680 tonnes.

The United Nations estimates that drought caused opium production to fall to
1,700 tonnes last year from more than 2,300 tonnes in 1997.


Critics point out that Rangoon is home now to at least three men, including
the notorious former drug warlord Khun Sa, with bounties of US$2 million on
their heads.

Many other major traffickers - including two others with US$2 million
bounties on their heads - appear to have nothing to fear from the junta.