U.S., CHINA SIGN PACT TO COOPERATE IN FIGHT AGAINST DRUG CRIMES

BEIJING, June 19 - After years of difficult negotiations, the United States
and China signed their first law enforcement agreement today, pledging to
cooperate and share intelligence in fighting drug-related crime.

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

The director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy, Barry R.
McCaffrey, predicted in an interview that the agreement will lead to U.S.
training of Chinese drug officers and providing China with equipment to
fight drug trafficking, and eventually to 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," McCaffrey said, acknowledging that such a step would bring
American and Chinese police agencies closer than ever.

McCaffrey's visit, planned for almost two years, was an indication that
despite twists and turns in Washington's relations with Beijing,
cooperation in some sensitive areas out of the international spotlight has
continued.

But despite today's optimism, a series of issues continues to bedevil
closer cooperation in law enforcement. These include a historic mistrust
between Chinese and U.S. security services, rivalry among anti-drug
bureaucracies and what some U.S. officials called a lackadaisical attitude
on the part of some Chinese governmental agencies about the drug problem in
their country.

Beijing remains disturbed by a 1988 case in which a Chinese drug suspect
was granted political asylum in the United States. And while the Drug
Enforcement Administration was allowed to dispatch an agent to China last
year, the FBI remains barred from China, perhaps, some officials say, for
its role in alleging that Chinese diplomats were involved in discussing
funneling donations into American political campaigns.

American diplomats, for their part, say that intelligence the DEA provides
to Chinese agents is not handled sensitively; it is often given over open
phone lines by officials with no direct connection to investigations.

Today's deal, known officially as the Mutual Legal Assistance Agreement,
was signed on the second day of McCaffrey's three-day trip to China, the
first by a U.S. director of drug policy. After visiting the southwest
province of Yunnan on Tuesday, the center of Chinese drug trafficking, he
will head to Hong Kong, Vietnam and Thailand.

China officially acknowledges about 600,000 heroin addicts. But McCaffrey
said the unofficial number is about 12 million, a huge about-face for a
country that made opium use illegal after the Communists came to power in
1949. Even more disturbing for China, McCaffrey said, is that 90 percent of
the addicts who are sent to Chinese detoxification camps return to using
heroin after serving their three-month sentences.