UNITED NATIONS FALLING SHORT ON FUNDS
FOR ANTI-OPIUM PROJECT IN MYANMAR

MONG PAWK, Myanmar - The U.N. drug control agency is struggling
fund an anti-opium offensive in impoverished Myanmar villages.

In a bid to drum up money from donor nations, diplomats were flown by
helicopter this week to the eastern Shan state, the heartland of
Southeast Asia's Golden Triangle and the target of the U.N.'s
$15.8-million project to wean communities off poppy
cultivation.

The U.N. International Drugs Control Program so far has received a
total of nearly $8 million from the United States and Japan, chief
technical adviser John Dalton said Friday.

The project targets nearly 600 villages in territory close to the
Chinese border controlled by the United Wa State Army. The army, which
reached a cease-fire with Myanmar's military regime in 1989, is
regarded by U.S. narcotics officials as the nation's leading producer
of heroin and methamphetamines.

Army chairman Pau Yu Chen told the visiting diplomats in a speech that
the U.N.'s proposed $15.8 million would not be enough to improve the
living standard of villagers who sell opium as a cash crop.

People in the region already live in poverty, reaping little profit
from their crop. Most opium money goes to drug dealers who process it
into heroin and sell it in other countries like Thailand and Laos.

Diplomats from Britain, Germany, France, China were among those who
traveled to Myanmar to hear about the U.N. project, which also calls
for building roads, schools, health clinics and fresh water supplies.

Myanmar, also known as Burma, is the world's second biggest source of
heroin, after Afghanistan. Heroin is made from opium gum, which is
harvested from poppy plants that thrive on mountainsides in the north
and eastern part of the country.