U.S., CHINA AGREE TO SHARE INFORMATION ON CRIME, DRUGS

BEIJING -- Hoping to slow the flow of tons of high-grade heroin through
China and into the United States, U.S. drug czar Barry McCaffrey and
high-ranking Chinese law enforcement officials agreed yesterday to share
evidence and intelligence on crime and drugs.

The crime-fighting accord, the first drug-related legal-assistance
agreement between the United States and China, is a signal of warming
relations. It was reached on the first stop of an eight-day Asian tour by
McCaffrey, director of the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy.

McCaffrey also will visit the southern Chinese city of Kunming and Hong
Kong as well as Vietnam and Thailand.

He said agreement would "open a door leading to far wider cooperation
against drugs."

The United States is particularly interested in efforts to plug a major
heroin pipeline that runs from Myanmar through southern China and crosses
the Pacific Ocean to the U.S. West Coast.

Most of the estimated 15 metric tons of heroin consumed each year by
America's nearly 1 million addicts comes from Colombia and Mexico. But in
recent years more has come from Myanmar (formerly Burma), whose military
dictatorship has been implicated in the trafficking.

Myanmar and Afghanistan produce 90 percent of the world's heroin, according
to U.S. estimates. Largely because of drought, Myanmar's opium production
declined last year to less than half its record 1996 level, but it still
was about 1,000 metric tons, U.S. officials said.

This heroin follows many routes to the U.S. market. Some of it passes
through Laos and Vietnam; some makes its way down through Thailand to
Bangkok. But the primary route now, U.S. officials say, is across southern
China.

Heroin passing along that route once was shipped to the United States
through Hong Kong and Taiwan. But a recent report by McCaffrey's office
said apparent declines in heroin shipments from Hong Kong and Taiwan may be
the result of an increase in shipments directly from southern China.

The pipeline is a leaky one, creating addicts all along its way.

China's communist government ruthlessly rooted out drug addiction after
taking control in 1949. But the looser controls that have accompanied
economic reform over the past 20 years also have led to more trafficking
and drug abuse.

Yang Fengrui, director general of the Narcotics Control Bureau of China's
Ministry of Public Security, said the agreement marked a new stage of
cooperation, which was necessary because "international drug problems need
international cooperation."