Burma's Golden Triangle a Canadian

[darnott@xxxxxxxxxxx]

The Vancouver Sun 
November 3, 1999

HEADLINE: Burma's Golden Triangle a Canadian political headache: A new video
seems to confirm the ties between Burma's military and key drug producers

BYLINE: Jonathan Manthorpe 


   A short video clip which surfaced in Thailand last weekend has the makings
of a headache for Foreign Minister Lloyd Axworthy in his struggle to develop a
broadly acceptable policy towards the drug baron-friendly military regime in
Burma. 

The video was taken Oct. 1 and appears to confirm the close links between the
Burmese junta and the key drug producers and traffickers from the country's
opium poppy growing region, the ''Golden Triangle'' of the northeast. 

The clip shows the most powerful member of the Rangoon junta, intelligence
chief Lt.-Gen. Khin Nyunt, inspecting the new headquarters of the man
international agencies consider the kingpin of Burma's drug trade, Wei
Hsueh-kang. 

Wei is commander of the United Wa State Army (UWSA), which began life as a
Beijing-funded communist separatist movement, but which has taken control of
the Golden Triangle's key poppy-cultivating regions. There are warrants for
Wei's arrest both in Thailand and the United States. 

The headache for Axworthy is that this seeming confirmation of the close
relationship between the military regime and the drug lords comes as he has
made a modest defiance of the influential anti- junta Burmese lobby in Canada. 

A few weeks ago the lobby reacted hotly to remarks by Axworthy in Bangkok that
he is prepared to ''engage with the Burmese'' government in an effort to stem
the flow of opium-derived heroin which floods into Canada. In recent years
Burmese heroin has killed about 300 Canadians annually. 

The Burmese lobby in Canada follows closely the position of detained democracy
leader Aung San Suu Kyi. She urges full sanctions against the Rangoon regime
and says nothing short of replacement of the military by the parliament elected
in 1990, but never allowed to meet, will halt the drug trade. 

Axworthy had tended toward this view and two years ago Canada imposed limited
sanctions, the most stringent foreign affairs department lawyers say are
permissible under existing legislation. 

But nothing creates a market like sanctions, especially limited ones. In the
past two years Canada's trade with Burma has doubled to $23 million Cdn and
Canadian investment in Burma continues to grow. 

While Axworthy has had the Burma lobby bending one ear, there have been equally
urgent appeals from the RCMP and international anti-drug organizations coming
in the other. 

This advice is that he should join with other affected countries and engage
with the Rangoon junta. 

The Mounties have officers attached to several Canadian diplomatic missions
around Asia, one of whose most important tasks is to collect information and
intelligence on drug trafficking.  

But they are often hobbled in their efforts by lack of funds and restrictions
on what they can do inside Burma. For both political and financial reasons
Mounties are sometimes unable to attend coordinating
meetings of regional anti-drug forces and international colleagues such as from
the U.S. and Australia. 

Political considerations stopped Mounties attending an Interpol conference on
the drug problem which was held in Rangoon in February. 

The Mounties' semi-isolation has its ironic aspects. The United Nations Drug
Control Program recently moved its local office from the Thai capital, Bangkok,
to Rangoon. The regional law enforcement adviser is Richard Dickens, a former
Mountie. 

Axworthy's comment a few weeks ago that he is prepared to engage the junta in
order to try to curb the drug trade appeared to be a response to the
unhappiness of Canadian law enforcement agents at the barriers to their work. 

The new video will, however, revive the counter argument that the military  and
the drug lords in Burma are as close as teeth and gums, and it's a mug's game
dealing with the junta. 

A description of the video of Khin Nyunt and Wei was set out Sunday by the
Bangkok Post. 

The video shows Khin Nyunt inspecting a multimillion-dollar headquarters Wei's
UWSA is building in rugged hill country near Mong Yawn, just across the border
from Thailand's city of Chiang Rai. 

The complex, whose construction the Thai military has been watching with
concern, includes fortifications, roads, a dam, electricity supplies, fuel
storage and a military school. 

Thailand has sent special military units to its northern border because
millions of meth- amphetamine -- ''speed'' -- pills have been flooding into
their country from Wei's drug laboratories. 

So, Bangkok's relations with Rangoon were already tense when exiled Burmese
students took over the junta's embassy in Thailand at the beginning of last
month. 

Rangoon was outraged and closed its border after the Thai authorities described
the students as ''freedom fighters'' and negotiated an end to the
hostage-taking. 

The release of the video to the newspaper is thus part of a diplomatic tussle
between Bangkok and Rangoon. 

And it has not gone unnoticed that the meeting between Khin Nyunt and Wei took
place on the same day as the embassy invasion. 

- - - 

Jonathan Manthorpe can be reached at jmanthorpe@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 

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