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The Nation: Myanmar junta calls for



Myanmar junta calls for help in fighting drugs

posted at 19:15 hrs (Bangkok time) 

YANGON, Feb 21 -- Myanmar's military authorities have called for the international community to
stop pointing the finger and help eradicate the drug trade by lifting sanctions on the isolated nation, a
report said Saturday. 

Home Minister Colonel Tin Hlaing said the time was right to finally stamp out the trade as most of
the country's insurgent groups had been quashed making access to border regions easier, the
state-run New Light of Myanmar daily reported. 

''I would like to urge the international community to cooperate in our fight against illicit drugs, instead
of putting the blame on the Myanmar government and hurling baseless charges against it,'' Tin Hlaing
said. 

''In this fight against narcotic drugs the US and its Western allies were not only refusing to assist
Myanmar ... but also made it physically impossible to do so by imposing an arms embargo,'' he
added. 

Tin Hlaing went on to say that without any substantial outside assistance, Yangon authorities had
since 1988 managed to prevent some 42 billion dollars worth of heroin reaching the US alone. 

Meanwhile the official press said that authorities here had arrested some 453 people on
drug-related charges in January, seizing some 297.3 kilos (654 pounds) of opium, more than 53
kilos (117 pounds) of heroin and 115,059 amphetamine tablets. 

Drugs police also destroyed a clandestine heroin refinery in the jungles of the northern Shan state,
hauling in more than 1,000 kilos (2,200 pounds) of raw opium, press reports said. 

Myanmar, along with Laos and Thailand, forms the infamous golden triangle, the world's prime
opium-growing region. (AFP)