News from Japan & TIME's article

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Japan considering easing restrictions on Burma

	TOKYO, Nov 4 (Reuter) - Japan said on Friday it was considering easing its
restrictions on economic ties with Burma in the light of recent talks between
Rangoon's ruling junta and detained dissident leader Aung San Suu Kyi.  "We
welcome the meetings as a positive step towards improving their human rights
problems,'' said a Foreign Ministry spokeswoman. "We have begun considering
how our relationship with them should be.''  She declined to say when or
whether granting of new official development aid (ODA) to Burma could be
resumed after being virtually stopped following the 1988 military suppression
of a pro-democracy uprising. 
	While small disbursements for Japanese ODA projects signed before the
military takeover have kept trickling into Burma, no new projects have
started in the past five years. The Burmese government has had two meetings
with Suu Kyi since September and the United States and the European Union
have softened their stance against Rangoon, saying they would enhance
cooperation with Burma if it makes progress in improving its human rights
record. 
REUTER
Transmitted: 94-11-04 03:03:38 EST
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Nearly 95,000 Burmese refugees go home

	COX'S BAZAR, Bangladesh, Nov 4 (Reuter) - Nearly 95,000 Burmese Moslem
refugees have returned home, leaving more than 156,000 still crammed in 16
Bangladesh camps, officials said on Friday.  They said 5,000 refugees, known
as Rohingyas, had been leaving every week since last month after a tripartite
agreement among Dhaka, Rangoon and the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees. 
	The Rohingyas fled to southeastern Bangladesh in early 1992 to escape
alleged military persecution in west Burma's Moslem-majority state of Arakan.
Repatriation began in September that year but the process had been slow until
recently, especially because the UNHCR wanted to make sure that no one was
sent back forcibly. 
REUTER
Transmitted: 94-11-04 06:26:10 EST
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TIME Magazine 
DIPLOMACY

GETTING IN THE WAY OF GOOD POLICY
A U.S. drug enforcer in Burma sues his colleagues for scuttling his best
efforts to curb trafficking 
BY J.F.O. MC ALLISTER/WASHINGTON 

	His reports were mangled, he claims. His home phone was bugged. A valued
source was betrayed. During the 14 months he spent in Rangoon, Drug
Enforcement Administration agent Richard Horn contends, he was lied to,
electronically surveilled and finally kicked out of the country -- not by the
Burmese heroin traffickers he was trying to nab but by State Department and
CIA officials who thought his antidrug campaign should be played down in
favor of other diplomatic interests. Horn, a 23-year DEA veteran now posted
to New Orleans, has taken the highly unusual step of suing the acting head of
the U.S. embassy who had him recalled, as well as the CIA station chief. The
State Department's Inspector General and the Justice Department are
investigating Horn's charges. It is not the first time the priorities of U.S.
agencies abroad have come into open conflict, but it is rare, to say the
least, that the result is a suit by a federal agent against his colleagues
for harassment over policy disputes. 
	To U.S. drug busters, Burma is Asia's mother lode, the source of 60% of the
heroin coming into America. Last year, officials say, Burma seized less than
1% of the estimated 2,575 metric tons of opium its drug lords produced.
  That is what drove Horn to push for better cooperation with Burma's
military junta, the State Law and Order Restoration Council. He and his DEA
bosses concluded there was no other way to hurt Burma's drug kingpins like
Khun Sa, who has some 20,000 men organizing production and distribution
routes. But that goal collided with the main thrust of U.S. policy. After the
junta nullified an election and killed thousands of protesters, the U.S. cut
off aid and trade privileges and then refused to send a new ambassador. Ever
since, the State Department has tried to minimize its contacts with the
junta. 
	The State Department had forced out Horn's two immediate DEA predecessors in
Rangoon, but he still considered it his ''dream job'' when he arrived in June
1992. Not for long. Horn is bound to silence by DEA rules, but his lawyer has
provided TIME with a long letter he wrote to Democratic Congressman Charles
Rangel detailing Horn's allegations. It recounts that Horn and Franklin
Huddle, the embassy's charge d'affaires, clashed over a report to Washington
that Horn thought unfairly denigrated the junta's antidrug efforts. Horn says
Huddle refused to obtain expert help from the U.S. to draft manuals for
Burmese police and prosecutors implementing new drug laws, but did approve
training at the CIA for Burmese intelligence officers. He claims that the CIA
divulged the name of a DEA informant to the junta and sabotaged a DEA survey
of opium yields by revealing to the government that the CIA -- distrusted by
the Burmese -- had secretly given the DEA the funds to conduct it. The
ultimate insult was discovering Huddle's cable to Washington relaying exact
quotes from a phone conversation Horn had made from his home. Horn knew of
another instance where the CIA had bugged a DEA agent, and concluded the same
had been done to him. 
	Sources familiar with the Inspector General's investigation say the former
CIA station chief absolutely denies wiretapping Horn. For his part, Huddle
says ''there's absolutely no truth whatsoever in Horn's allegations.''
Personality clashes played their part: a State Department colleague calls
Huddle ''a little martinet,'' while a DEA buddy admits that Horn is
''sometimes pigheaded.'' But the core of the fight in Burma was a vexing
question of policy: How intimate should Washington be with a vicious regime
to win its help on curbing drugs?   The diplomats argue that putting too much
emphasis on drugs is parochial and that the DEA often gets manipulated by
corrupt governments. The junta, they say, set up splashy drug busts for the
Americans that traffickers were happy to treat as a cost of doing business.
''The DEA,'' says an intelligence source,''was being played for a patsy by a
bunch of Burmese military folks who were getting a cut of the action.'' 
	Nevertheless, the Clinton Administration has decided after a long review to
offer Burma some incentives for better behavior, hoping that one payoff will
be serious help in combatting heroin. A U.S. delegation will meet this week
in Rangoon with junta leaders, who have just visited opposition leader Aung
San Suu Kyi. The junta has kept her under house arrest since July 1989.
Diplomats will continue to emphasize human rights, but ''our efforts at pure
isolation have not been tremendously successful,'' acknowledges Robert
Gelbard, Assistant Secretary of State in charge of narcotics matters. One
result of the new policy should be more unanimity among the different
agencies that work in the Rangoon embassy where, as Richard Horn's saga
shows, Burma's military bosses have had plenty of opportunity to play the
Americans against each other. 

With reporting by Sandra Burton/Hong Kong and Elaine Shannon and Douglas
Waller/Washington 
Copyright 1994 Time Inc. All rights reserved.
Transmitted:  94-10-30 13:30:51 EST
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