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Burmese Junta Offering U.



/* Written  1:13 PM  Jul 19, 1994 by wov.central@xxxxxxx in igc:soc.cult.burma */
/* ---------- "Burmese Junta Offering U." ---------- */
Subject : Burmese Junta Offering U.S. Opium Warlord for Arms

   NEW YORK (Reuter) - Burma's military leaders are offering
the United States a deal they hope will help bring down
notorious opium warlord Khun Sa in exchange for a lifting of the
arms embargo, The New York Times reported in its Friday
editions.
   The Times said the offer has been discussed with State
Department officials in recent weeks, according to military
officials in Burma. But the paper said the Clinton
Administration, which has often been critical of the Burmese
junta and its human rights record, is unlikely to be swayed by
the offer.
   Still, The Times said American officials say the proposal
could be important, if it signals a new willingness by the army
to destroy the opium operation run by Khun Sa.
   Burma is the source of most of the world's opium, the raw
material of heroin. Most of the opium grown there is cultivated
in rugged mountainous areas controlled by  Khun Sa, The Times
said.
   Khun Sa, who was indicted on narcotics charges in the United
States in 1989, has recently declared himself president of a
newly independent state on Burma's eastern border. Junta
officials say he is responsible for most of the heroin on
American streets, the New York Times said.
   Burmese government forces launched an offensive against Khun
Sa's strongholds in northeast Burma's Shan state late last year.
Fighting, at times heavy, has continued since then.
   The military government announced last month that almost 450
people from both sides had been killed in the campaign so far.
   "We've begun to hurt him," The Times reported Lieutenant
Colonel Kyaw Thein, as saying. Thein --- a spokesman for the
Burmese junta's anti-narcotic program. "If we can, we would
like to destroy Khun Sa's army and wipe it off the map."
   But Burma would need help from the United States, which has
cut off all aid to the junta, including military assistance, to
protest human rights violations, Thein said, according to the
paper.
   The nation's leading dissident, Daw Aunt San Suu Kyi, winner
of the 1991 Nobel Peace Prize, is about to enter her sixth year
under house arrest in Yangon -- formerly Rangoon.
   "We alone cannot do this job," Colonel Kyaw Thein said of
the drug war. "If the U.S. really wants Khun Sa to be wiped out
of this area, the first thing they will need to do is help us
with arms and ammunition. We cannot buy any of that sort of
thing," the Times quoted him as saying.


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