PHILIPPINES SAYS CHINESE ARMY MEN SMUGGLE DRUGS

MANILA, March 28 (Reuters) - The Philippines' national security
adviser said on Wednesday China was the biggest source of illegal
drugs and Chinese army officers were involved in narcotics
trafficking.

Roilo Golez, a senior aide to President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, said
some Philippine police and military men were also involved in drugs.

Golez said the drugs trade in the Philippines was worth 260 billion
pesos ($5.31 billion) a year and about 95 percent of the drugs, mostly
the stimulant methamphetamine hydrochloride, or "ice," came from China.

"The information we got is that some moonlighting PLA (People's
Liberation Army) officers are the ones running the manufacturing
plants in four or five coastal prices of China," Golez told the
Foreign Correspondents Association of the Philippines.

Asked what the supposed involvement of PLA men was, Golez said:
"Manufacturing and trafficking."

Golez said he got his information from Philippine drug enforcement
agencies.

Of about 280 drugs syndicates operating in the Philippines, more than
50 of them had links with the Philippine military and the police, he
said.

Golez said 1.7 million Filipinos were victims of illegal drugs, making
the problem the country's biggest security threat.

Good Neighbours

Manila had raised the drug-smuggling problem with Beijing two years
ago and the Chinese authorities pledged to take action "to show that
they are good neighbours."

Golez was chairman of the House committee on security and public order
before Arroyo took him into her cabinet last month to serve as adviser
on national security.

He said a government mission went to Beijing last year to brief the
Chinese authorities on the problem and he believed Arroyo also raised
the matter with China when she visited two years ago when she was
still vice-president.

"They...assured the Philippine government that they do not tolerate
this," he said. "Probably they have some problems also controlling
their own people."

Golez expressed hope China would curb the flow of drugs to the
Philippines, saying a 50 percent cut in the smuggling of drugs would
halve the narcotics problem.

He said drugs were normally smuggled in by sea.

"They are brought by fishing vessels, by big ships, then jettisoned in
the high seas, then picked up by smaller fishing vessels and from
there they would go by a thousand different directions," Golez said.

Drugs trafficking is among so-called "heinous crimes" punishable by
death in the Philippines.