Burma Update

SCMP - Tuesday, March 2, 2004
AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE in Washington

Updated at 10.50am:
Myanmar has made a modest cut in poppy cultivation but remains the world’s second ranked supplier of opium, the United States warned overnight (HK time) in a new swipe at Yangon’s ruling junta.

In an annual report on world drugs production, the State Department gave Myanmar’s ruling generals little hope for their campaign to shed their country’s reputation as a narco-dictatorship.

“Burma has reduced poppy production modestly but remains far from demonstrating the counternarcotics commitment that would ... get itself out of the trafficking system,” said Robert Charles, assistant secretary of state for international narcotics and law enforcement.

He was speaking as the department unveiled its annual International Narcotics Control Strategy report, which contained an unflattering portrait of Yangon’s vaunted anti-drugs drive.

The report accused Myanmar of playing a leading role in the regional trafficking of amphetamine type stimulants.

Drug gangs based in the border areas between the mainland, Myanmar and Thailand annually produce several hundred million metamphetamine tablets, the report warned.

The report also raised fears that some ethnic groups in Myanmar may be given a pass by the central government in Yangon on drugs production, to ensure that fragile ceasefire deals with the military hold.

“Several of the ethnic trafficking armies, especially the Wa, also control amphetamine production labs and extensive trafficking operations,” the report said.

Those operations raised “questions whether their gradual departure from opium cultivation is not just a business decision to concentrate on” amphetamine production, the State Department report said.

The United Nations said last month that opium production in Myanmar has been slashed by two-thirds since 1996, but booming trafficking in methamphetamines remains a major concern.

The UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) said ahead of the March 2 release of an annual global drugs report that the ruling military junta had taken further steps in the past year towards eradicating opium.

The United States is frequently at odds with Myanmar’s military rulers, whom it accuses of doing too little to combat narcotics production and of presiding over gross human rights abuses.

Washington is also a staunch supporter of pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi, who has waged a bitter struggle against the military since it refused to recognise the 1990 landslide election victory of her National League for Democracy.