Heroin kills UK peer's brother in Myanmar-paper
YANGON, March 6 (Reuters) - The younger brother of a British viscount died last week of a heroin overdose in a hotel room in Myanmar, an official newspaper reported on Monday.
Hugh Fitzroy Newdegate, 38, died at Yangon's five-star Traders Hotel last Friday, the Myanmar-language Kyemon daily said. Newdegate was the younger brother of James Newdegate, who became the fourth Viscount Daventry last month.
A British embassy official confirmed the death, but said he could not comment on the cause.
"I can confirm a British citizen was found unconscious in his hotel room and was later pronounced dead. But I can't say anything else at the moment because I haven't got the post-mortem police report.
The paper quoted doctors at Yangon General Hospital and forensic experts of the chemical examiners' office who made the post-mortem examination and inspection of objects found in the hotel room as saying Newdegate had died of a drug overdose.
The death came less than a month after that of his father -- Francis Newdegate -- on February 15, aged 78.
The paper said Hugh Newdegate arrived in Yangon from Bangkok on March 1 and checked into the Traders Hotel.
On Friday morning, he failed to answer an overseas phone call and hotel officials later unlocked the door and found him in bed, the paper said.
Police officers and doctors found a packet of heroin weighing about 0.02 gram in a drawer of the telephone desk next to his bed, it said.
Military-ruled Myanmar is the world's second largest producer of heroin after Afghanistan.
Reuters, 6 March 2000
The daily quoted a diplomatic source as saying the ASEAN Economic Ministerial would be held in Yangon on May 1-2. Government officials in Myanmar could not immediately be reached to confirm the report.
The newspaper's source said the meeting would be a follow-up to an informal ASEAN summit held in Manila in November and be the first time Myanmar had hosted such an event since it joined the regional group in 1997.
ASEAN comprises Myanmar, Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore, the Philippines, Indonesia, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia and Brunei.
The paper said the meeting would discuss cooperation in the greater Mekong sub-region and sustainable development.
The paper quoted a diplomat as saying Japan would discuss new guidelines on humanitarian aid to Myanmar focusing on health, education and narcotics control. Japan would also offer scholarships for students to study in Japan, the report said.
Myanmar is subject to U.S. sanctions because of its human rights records, while the European Union bars senior officials of the government from its borders. Japan has taken a softer line.
The EU froze aid to Myanmar after troops there killed thousands to crush a pro-democracy uprising in 1988 but resumed some humanitarian assistance after opposition leader Aung san Suu Kyi was released from six years house arrest in 1995.
In November, Japanese Premier Keizo Obuchi offered help to Myanmar should it take up economic structural reform seriously.
Obuchi stressed it would be easier to give aid if Myanmar was more democratic, but analysts say Tokyo's principal concern appears to be losing business and political influence to China.
International forum on Myanmar closes in secrecy
SEOUL, March 6 (AFP) -
An international forum of nations concerned by the long standoff between Myanmar's military junta and the opposition ended in Seoul on Monday with the proceedings shrouded in secrecy, sources said.
The outcome of the two-day meeting, held in an outlying building of a hotel far from Seoul's city centre, was unknown with officals involved remaining tight-lipped even about the purpose of the session.
"It was private brainstorming session and any comment will come from the United Nations in New York," said a diplomatic source linked to the informal talks attended by around 30 diplomats and officials from 14 countries.
Sources and reports have indicated the talks were aimed at kickstarting a long-frozen dialogue between Yangon's miltary rulers and the democratic opposition of Nobel peace laurate Aung San Suu Kyi.
The Seoul meeting was on the lines of a retreat in Chilston, England in 1998 which reportedly came up with a "carrot and stick" formula for diplomacy designed to nudge the junta into making concessions.
Soon after the talks, Western states working in conjunction with the World Bank reportedly offered Yangon a one billion dollar package of aid in return for reforms. The approach was later rejected by the ruling generals.
Diplomats in Yangon have denied any specific figure was discussed at Chilston.
The opposition and the junta have been locked in a protracted and sometimes violent standoff despite years of appeals by the international community for both sides to enter dialogue.
The junta is accused of severe human rights violations in its repression of the opposition since it refused to recognize its victory in 1990 polls and subsequently put Aung San Suu Kyi under house arrest.
Years later, the movements of the Nobel laureate are still heavily restricted and her party's ability to organise has been crushed by a junta campaign of intimidation and detentions of members.
"The forum is also partly aimed at improving the human rights situation there and of course is related Aung San Suu Kyi," a Seoul government official said on condition of anonymity.
Another official said the low-profile meeting would produce no formal and written results, and he refused to elaborate on the politically sensitive forum.
Myanmar earlier urged its ASEAN partners not to attend the Seoul meeting, according to reports in the Thai press.
But Thailand, Malaysia and the Philippines, leading ASEAN members, all sent delegates to the forum, which was also attended by officials from the United States, Canada, Australia, Japan, Britain and the United Nations.
Indonesia has not sent any delegates, said Seoul officials who have expressed hopes that a peaceful and democratic solution can be found in Myanmar.
South China Morning Post, 6 March 2000
Tourism plan for drug warlord's lair
Urbane: Khun Sa is being allowed by the ruling junta to return to his old stamping ground.
WILLIAM BARNES
No one who has followed the extraordinary career of drug warlord Khun Sa would be surprised to learn that his old lair is to be turned into a tourist resort.
The premier gangster of Burma's Golden Triangle in the late 1970s and early 1980s put Ho Mong on the map by playing hotelier to a long queue of journalists and other curious visitors.
The urbane, open-faced half-Chinese, half-Shan warrior was eager to show off his narco-Disney land: pirouetting troupes of dancing girls, smartly drilled boy soldiers and workshops for making gem-encrusted shoes.
At Ho Mong near the northern Thai border, an uneducated warlord could get everything he wanted except a firm grip on reality.
Like all good holiday guides, Khun Sa was able to entertain his guests with colourful fantasies. In his case, it was the lie that he was really a Shan nationalist forced to stoop to trafficking in heroin to support a political movement.
Not many outsiders really believed him but, compared with the grim-faced military dictatorship that opposed him, he was an entertaining diversion. By setting himself up as a freedom fighter, Khun Sa, now 66, may have thought it helped his tricky - but important - relations with the Thai security forces.
The nationalist charade backfired because by trying to build up his image as an exotic, glamorous rebel, he merely raised himself up to be a notorious public face of the global drug menace.
If Rangoon appeared more infuriated by his political posturing than his trafficking, pressure from the United States forced Thailand to eventually cut him loose. He surrendered to Rangoon four years ago.
Khun Sa is at heart a gregarious rogue with a high capacity for cruelty forged, it is true, by a hard life riven with uncertainty.
He was capable of having villagers slaughtered for selling opium to rivals. Many of his soldiers were press-ganged into his army as children - and shot if they tried to desert. Yet they respected his claim that he was protecting the Shan.
Perhaps the soldiers he so freely used as cannon fodder were the only people truly shocked by his surrender. Many remain deeply unhappy with his action.
Khun Sa is said to be ill and ready to return home. But to play out his days as host at a holiday resort? That may be a fantasy too rich even for the Golden Triangle.
Kyodo, 6 March 2000
Kyodo economic news
summary - 6 -
Mon 6 Mar 2000
TOKYO, March 6 (Kyodo) -- BANGKOK - China, Myanmar, Laos and Thailand are to sign an agreement in April on commercial navigation of the Mekong River, in a bid to boost trade and tourism, a Thai government official said Monday.
The official, who requested anonymity, said senior officials of the four countries adopted the draft Monday in Yangon, and added the Thai cabinet will endorse the agreement in its meeting Tuesday.
Kyodo, 6 March 2000
Four countries to
sign Mekong River agreement
Mon 6 Mar
2000
BANGKOK, March 6 (Kyodo) -- China, Myanmar, Laos and
Thailand are to sign an agreement in April on commercial navigation of the
Mekong River, in a bid to boost trade and tourism, a Thai government official
said Monday.
The official, who requested anonymity, said senior officials of the four
countries adopted the draft Monday in Yangon, and added the Thai cabinet will
endorse the agreement in its meeting Tuesday.
China wants to legalize the entry of cargo and passengers into the upper part
of the Mekong River to take advantage of increasing trade with Southeast Asian
countries, notably Thailand.
Initiated in May 1996, the agreement aims to facilitate transport, trade and
tourism among the four countries.
The agreement mentions 14 ports along the Mekong River where vessels of the
four countries may stop without paying transit fees for passengers and goods.
The agreement also stipulates that it will take effect five years after it is
signed, and will automatically be renewed every three years.
The Mekong River, at 4,800 kilometers the longest river in Southeast Asia,
flows from China's Qinghai Province near the border with Tibet through six
countries, including Cambodia and Vietnam.
The signatories also agreed not to change the natural physical conditions of
the river. Nation, 6 March 2000
Rangoon to host summit for economic ministers
BURMA will host a special meeting of East Asian economic ministers in May to
improve economic and investment cooperation with the region, an informed
diplomatic source said yesterday.
The Asean Economic Ministerial meeting to be held in Rangoon on May 1 and 2
and attended by economic powerhouses China, Japan and South Korea, the source
said.
"This is the first time that Burma will have acted as host to this kind of
meeting since it became an Asean member in 1997," the source said.
The meeting will follow up on the informal Asean summit meeting in Manila
last November, the source said. "The member states will also discuss
co-operation concerning the Greater Mekong Sub-Region and sustainable
development," the source said.
Asean comprises of Burma, Brunei, Cambodia, Laos, Indonesia, Malaysia, the
Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam.
Meanwhile, a diplomat said that Japan will take the opportunity to discuss
with Burma "new guidelines" on grant aid for humanitarian assistance, which will
focus on health care, education as well as narcotics control.
Tokyo is also considering sending a team of experts to Rangoon to help on
Human Resource Development projects.
"Japan will also offer scholarships to Burmese students to study in Japan,"
the diplomat said.
The country is a major aid donor to Burma, although it has criticised its
poor record on democratisation and human rights protection in the country. Japan
stopped its aid to Burma in 1988 when a military junta staged a coup d'etat and
carried out savage suppression of pro-democratic dissidents.
Tokyo resumed the aid after the junta released leading opposition leader,
Aung San Suu Kyi from long-term house arrest in 1995. Japan sent its former
premier, Ryutaro Hashimoto, to Rangoon in December last year on a fact-finding
mission looking at political, social and economic development in the country.
BY SA-NGUAN KHUMRUNGROJ
South China Morning Post, 6 March 2000
Rangoon to host first Asean
meeting
REUTERS in Bangkok
Updated at 1.30pm: The Asean Economic Ministerial would be held in Rangoon on May 1-2, according
to a diplomatic source.
Government officials in Burma could not immediately be reached to confirm the
report.
The meeting will be a follow-up to an informal Asean summit held in Manila in
November and be the first time Burma has hosted such an event since it joined
the regional group in 1997.
The paper said the meeting would discuss cooperation in the greater Mekong
sub-region and sustainable development.
Asean brings together 10 south east Asian nations. China, Japan and South
Korea all hold observer status.
The paper quoted a diplomat as saying Japan would discuss new guidelines on
humanitarian aid to Burma focusing on health, education and narcotics control.
Japan would also offer scholarships for students to study in Japan.
Burma is subject to US sanctions because of its human rights records and
while the European Union bars senior officials of the government from its
borders. Japan has taken a softer line.
In November, Japanese Premier Keizo Obuchi offered help to Burma should it
take up economic structural reform seriously.
Mr Obuchi stressed it would be easier to give aid if Burma was more
democratic, but analysts say Tokyo's principal concern appears to be losing
business and political influence to China.
Burma will host a meeting of economic ministers
of the Association of South East Asian Nations (Asean) in May, Thailand's Nation
newspaper reported on Monday.