'DRUG FREE' MOVE GREETED WITH SUSPICION

Burma's junta said at the weekend that shifting 50,000 poppy-growing
villagers from the Chinese border will help smash the heart of its biggest
opium growing region.

But the ethnic Wa will be dumped in an area controlled by the country's
most notorious trafficker - Thailand's public enemy No 1, Wei Hsueh-kang,
who is also wanted in the United States on drugs charges.

The United Wa State Army told reporters on a tour organised by the junta
that the three-year move showed that it was serious about making its rocky
border territory drug-free by 2005.

"We have designated 2005 as the year of the narcotics-free zone," said Khin
Maung Myint, a liaison officer for the Wa army. "My feeling is that only
when these projects succeed, will we eradicate the problem."

The Wa army - dubbed the world's most strongest trafficking force by a US
official - said moving farmers to more fertile land would enable them to
grow alternatives to opium like tropical longan fruit.

Wa and junta officials were careful to downplay the fact that these people
would be moving into an area near the Thai border that has become notorious
for a production of amphetamines so massive it has triggered a national
emergency in Thailand.

The destination named by a junta spokesman - Wan Hong - is one of several
"development areas" being built by the Wa's ethnic Chinese partner Wei,
using his drugs profits.

Observers said the junta would like to thumb its nose at the West which has
done little to aid its anti-drug campaign because of worries over political
repression and human rights abuses.

Rangoon's anti-drug czar Colonel Kyaw Thein said the move showed that
Western critics were wrong in claiming the junta was soft on traffickers.

Yet deep suspicion remains over whether the leaders of an ethnic group, who
derive most of their strength from drug profits, will so readily abandon
the lucrative trade, especially when even the junta admits the country only
aims to be "drugs free" by 2020.

Colonel Kyaw Thein said yesterday that 10 senior officers and hundreds of
lower ranks in the Burmese army had been jailed for a minimum of seven
years over the past two years for involvement in the drugs trade.

Critics of the cash-strapped Burmese army that has nurtured highly intimate
relations with most of the country's top traffickers were sceptical.

The Wa has been allowed to retain a fearsome array of weaponry for an
estimated 20,000 soldiers under a 1989 cease-fire deal.

By condoning a big shift of ethnic Wa towards the Thai border - something
likely to further disturb the Thais - the junta may also be hoping to
neutralise Shan rebels waging a guerilla campaign for autonomy.

Shan sources said yesterday that 15,000 Wa may already have been dumped
near the Thai border in recent weeks. They expect many more in the next six
months.