BurmaRelated News, 22 March 2000

ABC News, 22 March 2000
Newspaper: China to Step Up Anti-Drug War

BEIJING (Reuters) - Chinese police, alarmed by a rapid rise in drug smuggling, especially crystal metamphetamine -- or "ice" -- plan to step up efforts against the inflow, the China Daily reported Wednesday.
It quoted Yang Fengrui, China's top police drug-buster, as saying 16 tons of ice was seized last year -- 10 times more than in 1998.
Yang said police also seized 5.3 tons of heroin in 1999, but gave no comparative figure.
Much of that came from the so-called Golden Triangle, the area where Myanmar, Laos and Thailand meet, Yang told a national narcotics conference.
The area of China just across the border from Myanmar has long acknowledged a growing heroin problem. The newspaper did not say where the market for ice was.

ABC News, 22 March 2000

Foreign policy, human rights at question in high court case

WASHINGTON (AP) _ The Supreme Court is weighing foreign policy and human rights issues in a case that asks whether states can limit purchases from companies that do business in countries known for rights abuses.
Massachusetts sought to express its objection to such abuses in Myanmar by generally refusing to buy from companies with dealings in that Asian country.
After hearing arguments today, the Supreme Court must decide by summer whether Massachusetts is lawfully participating in the economic market as it sees fit or unlawfully interfering with U.S. foreign policy.
"Nothing in our federal Constitution denies to the states the right to apply a moral standard to their spending decisions," the state's lawyers said in court papers. "Not one constitutional grant, prohibition or command requires the states to trade with dictators."
But the National Foreign Trade Council, which challenged the 1996 Massachusetts law, said in court briefs, "The Constitution reserves such foreign policy exercises exclusively to the national government. To allow individual state action would undermine national policy and put the nation at risk."
The Clinton administration is supporting the foreign trade group, which won a lower court ruling that the law interferes with the federal government's conduct of foreign policy.
Several state and local governments have restricted their dealings with companies that do business in Myanmar as well as other countries including China and Cuba. During the 1980s, many states and cities boycotted companies that did business in South Africa because of racial apartheid there.
The military has ruled Myanmar, one of the world's poorest countries, since 1962. Foreign donors including the United States have heavily restricted aid to Myanmar_ also known as Burma _ since a 1988 crackdown on a pro-democracy uprising in which the military gunned down thousands of protesters.
The Massachusetts law says a company doing business with Myanmar can sell goods and services to the state only if its bid is 10 percent lower than all other bids. The law makes exceptions for purchases of some medical devices and for news-gathering and international telecommunications companies.
Several months after the Massachusetts law was enacted, Congress imposed its own more limited sanctions on Myanmar. Under the law, President Clinton barred new U.S. investment in the country in 1997.
The foreign trade council challenged the Massachusetts law in 1998. A federal judge ruled for the council, as did the 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which said the law interfered with federal foreign policy and was pre-empted by the federal government's own sanctions against Burma.
Massachusetts' appeal is supported by 22 states: Arkansas, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Hawaii, Louisiana, Maine, Maryland, Minnesota, Missouri, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Texas, Utah, Vermont and Washington.
The foreign trade council is supported by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, National Association of Manufacturers, American Insurance Association and Chemical Manufacturers Association.
The case is Natsios vs. National Foreign Trade Council, 99-474.

AP, 22 March 2000

Myanmar Opens US$8 Mln Bitumen Plant - Reports

YANGON (AP)--Myanmar's state oil and gas enterprise has opened a US$8 million bitumen factory close to Yangon, official newspapers reported Wednesday.

The factory, built over 16 months under a 1998 contract with Nichimen Corp. (J.NIM) of Japan, has the capacity to produce 200,000 metric tons of bitumen annually, the New Light of Myanmar newspaper reported.

Lt. Gen. Khin Nyunt, first secretary of the ruling military council in Myanmar, attended the inauguration Tuesday of the plant at Tanyin, which lies across the Yangon river southwest of the capital city.