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Bangkok Post(25/4/99)



<center>THAI-BURMESE RELATIONS

</center>

<bold>Rangoon rejects Mae Sot road </bold>Prefers to link Tavoy with
Kanchanaburi


Nussara Sawatsawang

	Thailand has failed to get Burma's approval to resurface a road from Mae
Sot to Rangoon to stimulate border trade and tourism-despite Bangkok's
readiness to provide soft loans for the project.

	Members of the House Committee on Economics, led by chairman Treephol
Johjit, made the latest effort to get approval from the Burmese
government in a recent visit to Rangoon during which they met with deputy
construction minister Thura Aye Myint. But a source said the Burmese
position remained unchanged.

	Thailand is in favour of the road over the Thai-Burmese Friendship
Bridge but Rangoon, according to a source, prefers constructing routes
either from the Three-Pagoda Pass or Bong Ti in Kanchanaburi to its
future port in Tavoy.

	Mr Treephol said resurfacing the road from Mae Sot to Rangoon would save
transportation costs and time for Thai exports to markets in Burma and
promote tourism.

	Mae Sot district in Tak is the most important outlet for Thai goods to
Rangoon and other areas in Burma, with trade worth 450 million baht a
month during the boom period.

	It normally takes a full day for trucks to reach the Burmese capital,
which is 420km from the border. Preliminary surveys show that about 340km
of the road needs to be upgraded and widened.

	The industry ministry, seeing the the road could boost economic
activities for Thailand and its neighbouring countries, is keen to set up
an economic zone.

	The Finance Ministry has a 300-million-baht soft loan for Burma which
was set aside several years ago for a road development project in
northern Burma. But the Rangoon government never used it after giving the
concession to a Thai private company.

	Thailand hopes Burma will use the loan, whose conditions include a
requirement to use Thai contractors and materials, for the Mae
Sot-Rangoon road instead.

	But the source said the Burmese government was thinking of improving the
route with its own budget and using a loan from Thailand for the
construction of a 110km road from the Thai border at Kanchanaburi to
Tavoy, to be another commercial outlet, the source said.

	Thai officials argued prospects for the latter route looked dim because
of armed ethnic minorities who were active in the area.

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<center>NORTHERN BORDER

</center>

<bold>Murders in Fang still a mystery

</bold>Slim evidence points to drug warlord

Subin Khuenkaew and Nusara Thaitawat

	Thre <<Picture>Prime Minister Chuan Leekpai comforting a relative of one
of the nine thai villagers killed mysteriously earlier this month near
Ban Mae Soon noe in chiang Mai's Fang district. 

-- Subin Khuenkaew e weeks into the investigation, and the truth behind
the gruesome murder of nine villagers from Ban Mae Soon Noi near the
Burmese border in Fang district, officially remains a puzzle.

	Only circumstantial evidence has been gathered so far, and it all points
to Burmese drug boss Wei Hsueh-kang.

	Even so, senior government officials, including Third Army commander
Lt-Gen Sommai Vichavorn, whose men have been involved in the
investigation from the start, refuse to go on record as saying they
believe Wei is behind the massacre.

	Wei is a leading figure in the United Wa State Army (UWSA). Wanted by
Thailand and the United States, which has offered a large reward, on drug
trafficking charges, he has emerged as the biggest and most powerful drug
boss in the Golden Triangle since Khun Sa of the Mong Tai Army
capitulated to the Burmese government in January 1996.

	Evidence pointing to him includes two eyewitness accounts of a group of
about 60 armed men being led by an undisclosed number of villagers from
Ban Mae Soon Noi itself into the near forest where the massacre took
place on March 31and April 1.

	Investigators said the witnesses did not have a good look at the faces
of the men and could not identify their organisation from their clothing,
but they insisted that in the past few years the only armed men who came
into the forest were from "the other side", meaning Burma's eastern Shan
state, and their only business was drugs.

	The area opposite Ban Mae Soon Noi and adjoining villages in Fang
district are all under the control of Wei.

	His 171st division is based across from Ban Kangti, and the 681st and
927th battalions across from the Office of the Royal Project in Doi Ang
Khang.

	The Third Army estimates that there are 300 to 500 well-armed UWSA
soldiers in those areas and they have total control.

	Villagers interviewed by the Bangkok Post in the presence of Third Army
investigators for their protection, explained that the forest near the
village has long been their hunting ground. Men hunted at night after
working in the fields and sometimes during the day outside planting
seasons. The women also went into the forest to collect wild produce.

	The villagers insisted that up until the massacre, women were safe alone
in the forest even at night.

	They said that even after drug traffickers turned the forest into a
major drugs centre, their daily lives had been left mostly undisturbed.

	"I'm not sure when it all began exactly, but soon enough drug dealing
had become common practice in the forest. Everybody knew what was going
on," said Sompob Tathip, whose 21-year-old son was one of the nine murder
victims.

	"We were able to survive by turning a blind eye. They went about their
business, we went about ours," he said.

	He declined to give a lot of detail for obvious reasons, but said most
of the drug trade was between people from the "other side" and people
from other villages, "with a very few exceptions".

	Ban Mae Soon Noi is considered unique by the Third Army. Its more than
300 households are purely northern Thai Buddhists. The villagers are
relatively well off from huge lychee orchards. There is water and
electricity and the roads are paved.

	This is a sharp contrast to most other northern border villages where
various ethnic groups mix with local northerners. In some villages ethnic
groups from Thailand and Burma outnumber the locals, and in others they
make up the entire population.

	Given this uniqueness, the senseless way in which the nine villagers
were killed came as a shock to many. It is the first time that anything
like this has happened.

	According to the Third Army only the first two victims could have links
to the drug trade, while not necessarily being directly involved
themselves. The other seven were members of a search party who went out
after the two failed to return on March 31.

	Sompob had actually joined the search party but his son had told him to
wait at the reservoir, some 500 metres from the village where most people
parked their vehicles before setting out on foot into the forest.

	"He told me I was too old," recalled the grieving father. "He told me to
wait at the reservoir in case the other two came out. I was supposed to
fire two shots in the air to let the search party know."Sompob's age
saved him from the torture inflicted on the nine victims. Investigators
said the seven members of the search party should not have been touched,
but because they saw what they should not have, they suffered in the same
way as the first two victims.

	There were signs of beating, stab wounds and burns on all bodies.
Forensic doctors concluded that the cause of death for all nine was a
hard blow with a wooden club on the back of the head.

	The killers laid out their victims' bodies, their hands still tied
behind their backs, in the various spots in the forest where they were
taken into small groups to be tortured, as though to extract some secrets
from them. The wooden clubs that took their lives were placed next to
them, together with 20 baht in cash and a single cigarette, which
investigators said was made in Pangsang, in northern Shan State where the
headquarters of the UWSA is located.

	Investigators were shocked at the state of the bodies and initially
focussed on the possibility of ritual killings, but soon they zoomed down
to the simple ruthlessness of drug dealers such as Wei.

	They said Wei has all the characteristics needed for such cruelty.

	Wei is embattled within the UWSA, according to informed sources.

	Negotiations as well as pressure for him to make an exit of some sort to
allow the rest of the UWSA and their dependants to settle down to a
normal life 10 years after the conclusion of a ceasefire agreement with
the Burmese government have been going on for quite some time.

	It is unclear whether these negotiations and the pressure are a show for
outside consumption, but Wei has been preparing for his exit.

	Analysts said the announcement of a US$2 million reward for his head by
the US last September had helped the push for changes inside the UWSA.

	Wei is known to have bought a huge amount of gold in key northern cities
at the end of last year and has been "clearing his stocks" of heroin and
methamphetamine. Anti-narcotics officials can only guess at the amount of
drugs released into the Thai market at "bargain prices", recent seizures
were huge - several involving hundreds of thousands and some over a
million tablets.

	Wei relocated his 361st brigade from Mong Yawn, a newly-developed town
across from Ban San Ton Du, Chiang Mai, just a few days after the
massacre took place.

	"It's as though he (Wei) was taking care of his unfinished business,"
commented an informed observer.

	"Whether it is him or not, the person who ordered such brutality must
have though that he had nothing to lose any more," the observer added.

	Wei is believed to have relocated just across from Ban Therd Thai in Mae
Faluang district, Chiang Rai. The village, formerly known as Ban Hin Taek
was the headquarters of Khun Sa in the 1970s until he was kicked out in a
military operation in 1992 during the time of Prime Minister Prem
Tinsulanonda.

	Army chief Gen Surayud Chulanont said the investigation had made some
progress but remained inconclusive. The Third Army is monitoring an
undisclosed number of villagers who are believed to have led the group of
60 into the forest. These villagers are known as the eyes and ears of
drug traffickers from the other side. They warn villagers not to go into
a certain area in the forest when something is happening. Most villagers
know it is best to listen to them.

	This weekend, the Third Army received a shipment of mine detectors
needed to clear their passage into a cave in the forest, believed to
house a refinery, chemicals needed to manufacture drugs, and weapons.

	The last traces left by the killers lead in two directions: one trail
goes to other side, and the other to Ban Yang, a village mostly inhabited
by Chinese Haw, about five kilometers from Ban Mae Soon Noi.

	A few days after the massacre took place, Thai army rangers ran into a
small group of armed intruders, one was killed during the brief fight
which ensued, the others managed to escape.

	The rangers found inside his backpack a UWSA uniform.

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