Huge Australia drug bust fraction o

[tinkyi@xxxxxxx]

Huge Australia drug bust fraction of shipments
07:59 a.m. Oct 15, 1998 Eastern

By David Brunnstrom

BANGKOK, Oct 15 (Reuters) - A huge heroin seizure in Australia this week was
among the largest ever but is possibly only a fraction of the amount leaving
the Golden Triangle every year, narcotics experts said on Thursday.
Australian police say the 400 kg of heroin, worth about $256 million,
originated in the  infamous opium-growing region straddling the borders of
Myanmar, Laos and Thailand.

Narcotics experts in Thailand said Myanmar was the only country in east Asia
capable of producing enough heroin for such a large shipment. Refining of
the drug in the country's northeastern Shan State is controlled by ethnic
Chinese opium lords like Peng Jia Sheng, Lo Hsing-han, Khun Sa and Lin Ming
Xian.

``The only place in east Asia where heroin refining is being done is along
Burma's border with China,'' said Swedish journalist Bertil Lintner, a
leading authority on Myanmar's drug trade.  A foreign police source in
Bangkok specialising in drug suppression said it was unclear which route the
shipments took from the Golden Triangle, but many were not being
intercepted. ``The Chinese take stuff in containers,'' he said. ``As a rule
they are getting through. What we catch are just the off-cuts,'' he said.

``We are estimating that we are seizing only five to 10 percent of what is
coming in,'' the source said.
The Golden Triangle is reckoned to be the world's source of heroin.
According to U.S. estimates, 2,500 tonnes of opium, the crop from which
heroin is derived, was grown there last year.

The U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency says about 70 percent of all heroin going
to the U.S. originates from the Golden Triangle. Lintner said there were
four possible routes the drugs could have taken out of Myanmar: through
China via Fujian, through landlocked Laos and out via Cambodia, through
Thailand, or through Myanmar itself.

``The China route is mostly for China's domestic consumption, he said.
``Increasingly it is going straight out of Burma (Myanmar).'' Shipments
through Myanmar had increased since ceasefire agreements were signed by the
military government with ethnic armies the drug barons used to protect their
trade, Lintner said.

Khun Sa, long considered to be the king of the Golden Triangle drug lords,
is widely believed to be living in Yangon under government protection, along
with Lo Hsing-han.  While the government in Yangon insists it is working
hard to stamp out the drug trade, Lintner said that since the ceasefire
traders had been able to obtain special government passes to avoid searches
of their convoys.

The sources said it should be possible to determine the exact origin of the
heroin and perhaps the route it took out of the country from the markings on
the packaging. The most common Golden Triangle brand is ``Double U-0 Globe''
Lintner said. Other brands are ``KKK,'' ``555,'' ``777'' and one
distinguished by three star symbols.

Eleven Indonesian men and seven Hong Kong Chinese will appear in court in
Sydney on Friday to answer charges stemming from the seizure.  Three were
taken off a 40-metre Belize-registered freighter Uniana on which the heroin
was found. The vessel was intercepted near Port Macquarie, about 300 km (185
miles) north of Sydney.

The police source said that despite Myanmar government claims, heroin
production was continuing in the north of that country largely unfettered.
``Myanmar's very much the problem. It's just unbelievable, I've never seen
anything like it, there are opium fields everywhere up there,'' he said.
``Burma's an absolute mess. Until it's all cleaned up, which is going to
take many, many years, this will keep happening.''