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SCMP-We'll halve opium output this



Subject: SCMP-We'll halve opium output this year, says commander

Friday  February 26  1999

Burma

We'll halve opium output this year, says commander

As illegal drugs worth more than US$200 million (HK$1.5 billion) were burned
yesterday, Burma's top anti-narcotics officer said the country's opium
production would halve this year.

"We expect production will drop by about 50 per cent this year from an
estimated 680 tonnes in 1998," Colonel Kyaw Thein said.

Drug experts say Burma is the world's largest producer of opium. UN
officials have estimated its opium output last year at closer to 1,700
tonnes and have said any declines in production that may have occurred were
mainly due to the weather.

Colonel Kyaw Thein said the authorities had destroyed more than 16,000 of
the country's 61,000 hectares of poppy fields and expected to destroy a
further 2,400 hectares this year.

The Central Committee for Drug Abuse Control chief was speaking after a
ceremony at which officials burned about four tonnes of opium, 430kg of
heroin, 163kg of marijuana, more than 15 million stimulant tablets - mostly
methamphetamine - and minor quantities of other drugs.

Steamrollers crushed bottles of narcotic cough syrup and liquid opium.

The ceremony was attended by delegates from an Interpol conference on heroin
being held in Rangoon.

Colonel Kyaw Thein defended the Government's conciliatory treatment of
former major drug traffickers, including Khun Sa.

He said the approach was the most efficient and practical one for ending the
drug trade and pacifying areas in the Golden Triangle opium-producing zone
which had been under the drug lords' control.

A meeting of European Union and Asean foreign ministers, jeopardised by a
row over Burma taking part, could go ahead if a deal on a separate junior
level meeting is struck, a Thai official said.