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SCMP-Albright condemns Burma over o



Subject: SCMP-Albright condemns Burma over opium

Thursday  March 4  1999
Drugs

Albright condemns Burma over opium

Welcoming committee: Hmong hill-tribe schoolboys in northern Thailand await
the arrival of US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright. Associated Press
photo
AGENCIES in Nong Hoi, Thailand
US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright used one of her first official
engagements in Thailand yesterday to admonish the junta in neighbouring
Burma for failing to stop drug cultivation.

Ms Albright stopped to talk to Hmong villagers on the outskirts of the
northern Thai provincial capital of Chiang Mai, one of the main smuggling
routes for illicit drugs from the Golden Triangle drug-growing region which
includes parts of Burma, Thailand and Laos.

She said the former drug-growing village, reformed with a crop substitution
programme sponsored by Thailand's royal family, was an example to Burma,
which Washington blames for profiting from the drugs trade.

Nong Hoi was "in marked contrast to Burma, where they are not doing the
kinds of things you are doing here, improving the living standard of hill
tribes and crop substitution", she told villagers.

"We must do all we can to provide alternatives to the dead end of drugs.
Here in Nong Hoi you are saying no to narcotics and yes to vegetables,
flowers, computers and books. Keep up the good work."

Thai officials accompanying Ms Albright, who arrived in Thailand on Tuesday
evening from China, said crop substitution efforts had drastically reduced
opium production in northern Thailand.

In a recent report, the US State Department lauded Thailand as implementing
one of the most successful narcotic crop-control programmes in the world.

The Thai Government, however, reported an increase last year in opium poppy
cultivation in Tak Province, northwestern Thailand, which borders Burma.

Opium production in Burma last year fell from above 2,000 tonnes to about
1,700 tonnes, mostly because of bad weather, the US and United Nations said.

The international police body Interpol endorsed Burma's anti-drugs policy
last Thursday at the end of a conference in Rangoon which was boycotted by

the United States, Britain and other Western nations.