NOTES FROM HERE AND THERE

QUANDARY ON BURMA AND DRUGS

Members of Burma's junta, including one of its big three, were pleasant to
South Bay Republican Tom Campbell when he met them recently in Rangoon.
They want an end to the U.S. ban on new investment in Burma; he wants opium
poppies eradicated, or at least a serious attempt. If drugs really can be
stopped at the source, he came to the right place. As much as 50 percent of
the world's heroin originates in Burma, much of it in areas where the junta
has negotiated "uneasy truces'' (Campbell's phrase) with tribal armies.

Campbell and two other congressmen - Democrat Donald Payne of New Jersey
and Republican John Cooksey of Louisiana - were escorted to northern Burma
by Colonel Kyaw Thein, who had negotiated many of the cease-fires (which do
not include the Karen ethnic group). When Campbell's party reached
territory held by the NDAA (National Democratic Alliance Army), the colonel
stopped answering questions and the NDAA started doing the talking. "I went
in with the government,'' Campbell said in a telephone interview, "but they
(the tribesmen) were the law.''

Legitimate enterprise in these areas is geared not to Rangoon but to China.
In Mongla, Campbell saw a casino and tourist hotel, a Catholic church and
Buddhist pagoda. A sugar factory had shut down; China has plenty.

Campbell doesn't want to be a "one-day wonder'' (instant expert), and he is
vague on some details. But he notes that farmers could grow buckwheat or
rice instead of poppies, but then what? There are no roads to get a crop to
Rangoon. If the Chinese don't want it, there's no buyer. But there is
always a market for opiate. A middleman comes to the door and pays up
front, though not generously.

Poppy cultivation has dropped in Burma. Democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi
("phenomenal, great presence, I have nothing but admiration for her'')
attributes this decrease to drought. She told Campbell that the junta, if
it had the will, could stamp out poppy production as it has stamped out
human rights. She says that nothing but humanitarian aid should come into
Burma, that when the government falls, the tribes will be part of the
political process and won't need bullets, or drug money to buy them. The
West will want to invest in a democracy.

Campbell has no reason to think that the junta will fall. He acknowledges
that investment needed to provide roads to get rice to market will shore up
a brutal regime that voided elections won by Suu Kyi's party in 1988. He
also knows that elements within the government and military profit from
drugs; Burma runs on drugs. But he was told by neighboring Thailand's
deputy foreign minister, Sukhumbhand Paribatra, "We don't approve of the
government of Burma, but we do work with them on drug eradication and you
should be open to doing the same.'' Campbell is undecided. A meeting with
the State Department on Monday may help make up his mind.

Since returning December 2 from his Asian tour - a day in Thailand, three
in Vietnam, four in Burma - Campbell has been running hard for the GOP
Senate nomination to oppose Democratic incumbent Dianne Feinstein. Burma
policy is not expected to play a big part in that election. Drug policy might.

NEW ZEALAND'S SURPRISE

Reports from New Zealand indicated that Helen Clark's Labor Party, in
coalition with the liberal Alliance, had won a parliamentary majority. Not
so. A recount gave the Greens a seat by 246 votes. Under the electoral
system introduced in New Zealand in 1996, that gave the Greens six seats
instead of none. The Greens have since picked up another seat. Don't bother
trying to figure this out.

One new Green member of Parliament is said to have taken part in every
civil disturbance in New Zealand since the early '80s; another is a
Rastafarian whose slogan was "Put the Dread in the House.'' The Financial
Times describes him as an ecoterrorist. The Greens aren't formally part of
Clark's (now minority) coalition, but the new government may need them for
some crucial votes.

[snip - the rest of the column's parts were not related to drug policy]