Asian States Urge U.S. Re

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/* Written  2:52 am  Jun 18, 1994 by wov.central@xxxxxxx in igc:soc.cult.burma */
/* ---------- "Asian States Urge U.S. Re" ---------- */
Subject : Asian States Urge U.S. Resume Burma Drug Effort

   WASHINGTON (Reuter) - Asian countries are urging the United
States to set aside its human rights concerns and resume
anti-drug-trafficking cooperation with Burma's ruling junta, the
top U.S. anti-drug official said Thursday.
   In remarks likely to fuel continuing debate in Congress and
in the administration, Lee Brown, director of the White House
Office of National Drug Control Policy, said Burma and China
were "essential partners in any international effort to counter
heroin production and trafficking."
   "How to increase the counternarcotics dialogue and
cooperation with these two countries is of high concern and a
major policy issue for the U.S., as well as for some of our
allies," Brown told a news conference.
   He was reporting on a two-week fact-finding tour that took
him to Hong Kong, Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand, Laos and Japan.
While in Thailand, Brown peered across the jungled Thai-Burma
border, the main gateway for the heroin refined from Burma's
bumper 2,575 metric ton opium crop.
   "Officials of every country I visited strongly emphasized
that any U.S. heroin strategy must deal with the reality of
Burma's opium production and the increasing transit of this
opium through China if it is to succeed," Brown said.
   As part of efforts to isolate Burma's junta in the late
1980s, the United States suspended a multimillion-dollar
anti-drug program that underwrote an opium eradication campaign.
U.S. outlays for the program totalled $9.4 million in 1987 and
$5 million in 1988 before being cut off entirely.
   The junta, which calls itself the State Law and Order
Restoration Council, has refused to recognize the 1990 election
victory of pro-democracy forces led by Aung San Suu Kyi, the
Nobel Peace Prize winner in her fifth year of house arrest
without charge or trial.
   Brown declined to spell out his own view on whether human
rights concerns should be less important than fighting the drugs
trade.
   Timothy Wirth, the State Department's undersecretary for
global affairs, has already recommended a resumption of
anti-drug cooperation with Rangoon, a change opposed by, among
others, John Shattuck, assistant secretary of state for human
rights and humanitarian affairs.
   Brown said he wanted to discuss Burma policy with members of
Congress before sending a recommendation to President Clinton in
the next month or so.
   Clinton, alarmed by a reported rise in heroin use in the
United States, has asked Brown to devise a new U.S. strategy to
meet the threat. About 60 percent of the heroin sold in the
United States comes from Southeast Asia, Brown said.
   Worldwide opium production has quadrupled in the last
decade, with poppy growing areas expanding, and heroin addict
populations, particularly in Asia, mounting.
   In producing more than 2,500 metric tons of opium last year,
Burma accounted for about 90 percent of the total from Southeast
Asia's "Golden Triangle," the world's biggest opium source,
according to an April 1994 State Department report.
   Brown said the United States should step up cooperation with
China, which also shares a border with Burma, to help cut drug
trafficking through its territory.
   In recent years, members of the Senate Foreign Relations
Committee have shown greater concern over Burma's human rights
violations than over its burgeoning heroin output.
   Richard Baum, a former congressional aide who now publishes
Drug Policy Report, a newsletter on drug control, said he
doubted lawmakers would suppport a resumption of any aid to
Burma under present circumstances.
   "The SLORC doesn't have to become a bunch of boy scouts,
but until Aung San Suu Kyi is freed, Congress is not about to
give the green light for drug aid for Burma," he said.


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