CHINA JOINS U.S. TO FIGHT CRIMES RELATED TO DRUGS

BEIJING - After years of difficult negotiations, the United States and
China signed their first agreement Monday between law enforcement
agencies, pledging to cooperate and share intelligence in fighting
drug-related crime.

The agreement is important because China is suffering an enormous boom
in heroin and methamphetamine use. China is also increasingly being
used as a smuggling route for heroin from Burma into the United States.

The White House anti-drug policy chief, Barry McCaffrey, said in an
interview here that the accord was the first step toward U.S. training
of Chinese narc cotics officers, the provision to China of U.S.
anti-narcotics equipment and an agreement on extraditing or at least
deporting drug suspects wanted by each country.

"Down the line we will certainly want to provide them with the tools
to collect evidence and collect intelligence particularly in the
Burmese drug theater," General McCaffrey said, adding that such a step
would bring U.S. and Chinese police agencies closer than ever before.

The accord, the Mutual Legal Assistance Agreement, was signed on the
second day of General McCaffrey's three-day trip to China, the first
by an American director of drug policy. After visiting the
southwestern province of Yunnan on Tuesday, the center of China's drug
trafficking, he plans to travel to Hong Kong, Vietnam and Thailand.

His visit to China, planned for almost two years, indicates that
despite twists and turns in Washington's relations with Beijing,
cooperation in some sensitive areas out of the international spotlight
has continued. The United States and China, for example, have since
the late 1990s conducted a joint eavesdropping operation along Burma's
border to monitor narcotics trafficking. When asked about the
operation, General McCaffrey said, "I have no comment on electronic
intelligence intercepts."

But despite optimism Monday, a series of issues continues to bedevil
closer police cooperation. They include a historic mistrust between
Chinese and U.S. security services, rivalry between bureaucracies
involved in fighting illegal drugs and what some American officials
call a lackadaisical attitude on the part of some Chinese agencies
about China's growing drug problem.

A 1988 case in which a Chinese drug suspect was granted political
asylum in the United States continues to bother the Chinese. And while
the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration was allowed to send an agent
to China last year, the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation remains
barred from China, perhaps, some officials say, for its role in
alleging that Chinese diplomats were involved in discussing the
funneling of donations into American political campaigns.

U.S. diplomats, for their part, say intelligence provided to Chinese
agents by the Drug Enforcement Administration is not handled
sensitively. It is often taken over an open phone fine by officials
with no direct connection to investigations.

Drug use in China is skyrocketing. China officially acknowledges about
600,000 heroin addicts, but General McCaffrey said the unofficial
number was around 12 million - a huge about-face for a country that
wiped out opium use after 1949. Even more disturbing for China, he
said, is that 90 percent of the addicts from Chinese detoxification
camps return to heroin use after their three-month sentences are served.

Underscoring the severity of China's problem, Beijing on Monday
announced a monthlong amnesty for drug users if they registered with
the police and vowed to enter drug treatment programs.

Drug Chief Speaks Out on 'Evil'

In a sign of Beijing's commitment to working with Washington, China's
chief official charged with fighting drugs made a rare appearance at a
news conference with General McCaffrey at the U.S. Embassy, 'Me
Associated Press reported.

"Over 100 years ago, we had the Opium War," said the official, Yang
Fengrui of the Public Security Ministry. "China was very much
victimized and we can never forget that pain. Drugs are a great
problem. It is the source of all evil. It is the enemy of all
humanity. "