Drug Czar Targets Burma H

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/* Written  2:52 am  Jun 18, 1994 by wov.central@xxxxxxx in igc:soc.cult.burma */
/* ---------- "Drug Czar Targets Burma H" ---------- */
Subject : Drug Czar Targets Burma Heroin

   WASHINGTON (AP) -- The United States must "engage" Burma, the
world's largest producer of opium, if it wants to curtail heroin
trafficking in Southeast Asia, President Clinton's top drug policy
adviser says he was told by officials in the region.
   However, the United States withdrew its ambassador and
terminated financial assistance to Burma six years ago because of
human rights violations in the country its rulers now call Myanmar.
   Lee Brown, director of the Office of National Drug Control
Policy, would not say if his new anti-heroin strategy, which he
expects to recommend to Clinton in another month, would seek to
change that.
   Brown, who just returned from a trip to Hong Kong, Malaysia,
Singapore, Thailand, Laos and Japan, where he met with top
anti-drug officials, said that in every country he visited, "the
message was quite clear: If we're going to deal with the problem of
opium in Southeast Asia, Burma has to be dealt with as well."
   The officials proposed no particular actions, he said, but told
him that if the United States wants to control the spread of
heroin, which is made from the opium poppy, "You have to engage
Burma in some way."
   He said he was not sure how to do that, as he shares the
concerns of Congress and the administration over human rights
violations. However, he said, "I am responsible for addressing the
issue of narcotics. What we have to do is think how we can address
both concerns."
   The Drug Enforcement Administration does have a small office in
Rangoon, Burma, said DEA spokesman Frank Shults.
   The DEA and Burmese authorities last year conducted three joint
undercover operations leading to arrests, including those of two
major drug traffickers, and the dismantling of a significant drug
trafficking organization, according to the State Department's
International Narcotics Control Report of April 1994.
   In addition, the Burmese government has declared heroin
trafficker Khun Sa a criminal and has expressed a willingness to
prosecute him if he is caught. The drug lord, who was called the
"Prince of Death" by former Attorney General Richard Thornburgh,
leads his own army. He was indicted in December 1989 in Brooklyn,
N.Y. on 10 federal counts. The Burmese government has denied that a
valid U.S.-Burma extradition treaty exists.
   According to State Department estimates, 60 percent of U.S.
heroin comes from Southeast Asia, most of it from Burma, which last
year produced some 2,575 metric tons of opium, a 13 percent
increase over 1992.
   The United States ended financial assistance to Burma in
September 1988, when the military ousted a civilian government and
killed thousands of demonstrators.
   The junta held free elections in 1990, but it never let the
overwhelming victors from the National League for Democracy take
office. Aung San Suu Kyi, that pro-democracy party's leader who has
been under house arrest since 1989, won the 1991 Nobel Peace Prize.
   In 1988, before the coup, Burma received $12.2 million in U.S.
assistance, including $5 million in anti-narcotics aid, a State
Department spokesman said.
   The United States has no ambassador in Burma, but maintains an
embassy in Rangoon headed by a charge d'affaires.
   On another issue, Brown sounded much like his predecessors in
the Bush administration -- William Bennett and Bob Martinez -- as he
railed against Congress for cutting the president's proposed
anti-drug budget.
   He said Congress, or one of its subcommittees working on
appropriations bills, has cut $37 million from the president's
request for the State Department's Office of International
Narcotics Matters, $300 million from treatment of hard-core drug
abusers, $30 million from a Safe and Drug-Free Schools proposal and
$30 million from other drug prevention programs.


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