BORDER DISPUTE PITS UNITED STATES AGAINST CHINA

U.S. Sends Soldiers To Drug Lords' Area

BANGKOK, Thailand -- Some 5,000 American soldiers are in northern Thailand
not far from the Chinese border this weekend as part of long-scheduled
Cobra Gold 2001 military exercises being staged at a time when Thailand and
Burma are trading angry diplomatic missives and live artillery shells.

Among the troops are about 20 instructors from the U.S. 1st Special Forces
Group who will stay behind after the maneuvers to train Thai commandos in
anti-guerrilla warfare.

Thailand and Burma, also called Myanmar, have been at loggerheads for weeks
over the disputed Doi Lang border area, a longtime stronghold of drug
warlords whose heroin refineries and amphetamine laboratories have
flourished for years with the knowledge of key military officers and
officials on both sides of the border.

Periodic hostilities over control of drug trafficking are no novelty. But
this time the United States and China are playing key roles on opposite
sides, just weeks after the U.S. spy-plane incident strained their
bilateral relations.

Navy Adm. Dennis Blair, chief of the U.S. Pacific Command, confirmed last
week at a news briefing that Washington has sent Special Forces
guerrilla-warfare specialists to act as "instructors" for a Thai commando
unit known as Task Force 399. Thai military officials gave the initial
number of U.S. instructors as 20 but said more could be expected.

The same Thai sources said Task Force 399 and the U.S. instructors would be
stationed at Mae Rim Village just north of Chiang Mai, a garrison town on
the edge of the infamous Golden Triangle, the poppy-growing zone on the
Burma, Laos and Thailand borders.

The highly mobile unit of about 100 will use two U.S.-donated Black Hawk
assault helicopters to chase and neutralize drug smugglers along the Golden
Triangle, operating less than 100 miles from Chinese border troops.

Their main enemy on the other side of the border will be the United Wa
State Army, an ethnic narcotics-guerrilla force loyal to the Burma military
junta. Western intelligence sources say China is the principal supplier of
arms and expertise for the Wa and the Burmese armed forces.

More than a year ago the Chinese persuaded the ethnic Wa, the most powerful
and most militant of the hillside tribes, to move their people, their army
and their drug laboratories from the Burma-China border in the north to
Burma's border with Thailand at Doi Lang in the south.

"It was a cunning move. By sending the Wa away from their own border the
Chinese dramatically reduced drug trafficking into China, which had become
a major problem for their own population. Sending the Wa to the Thai border
meant dumping the problem on the Thais and their Western allies," said a
narcotics expert who requested anonymity.

Asian intelligence sources said Beijing supplied the Wa with sophisticated
weapons and money in exchange for Wa help in constructing a network of
roads through Burma from China. The road system would give Beijing access
to seaports and naval bases on the Burmese coast, an access the Chinese
have coveted for years.

In a blunt warning, Burma's ruling military junta announced it was ready
"to fight side by side" with the Wa, whom the U.S. State Department has
identified in reports as major drug producers in the region.

Thai intelligence sources say the Wa already have been given sophisticated
Chinese-made HN-5N surface-to-air missiles capable of knocking out
low-flying airplanes and helicopters. On the other side, the United States
has supplied Thai forces with the latest night-vision, radar and digital
mapping equipment.

Burma has already warned the Thais that calling in American "specialists"
over the escalating border dispute is perilous to regional peace. In a
blunt diplomatic note last week, the junta demanded the Thai military
withdraw from 35 border outposts that Rangoon claims are within its own
territory. Bangkok has ignored the demand.

Although the maneuvers are publicized as an anti-narcotics campaign, some
Western diplomats say the extensive military mobilization and American
participation also are aimed at containing growing Chinese influence in the
region. Observers fear that the escalating border incidents, with
casualties on both sides, have the potential to explode into a conflict
drawing China and the United States into a confrontation.