ALBRIGHT CALLS FOR THAI REFORM

BANGKOK, Thailand (AP) Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, visiting the
heart of the Asian financial crisis, encouraged Thai leaders and their
people to stay on a path of democratic and economic reform.

On her way here to meet Thailand's royal and government leaders, Albright
delivered an anti-drug message as she toured a hill tribe village today
where farmers switched from growing opium poppies to vegetables and flowers.

She also met with young women rescued from a life of prostitution by a
non-governmental agency that offered them education and job training in an
effort to prevent their families from selling them or forcing them into the
sex trade.

"I think that we are learning that if there is going to be improvements in
democracy, in economic transformation for the people, that women have to be
very much a part of it," Albright said at her Chiang Mai stop. "A society
that can't use its women in that way has lost at least half its resources
or half its population."

Albright was meeting Thursday with Prime Minister Chuan Leekpai, whom the
Clinton administration has praised as an economic and political reformer
for moving to implement financial structural changes required by the
International Monetary Fund.

Last year's $17.2 billion IMF bailout is helping Thailand reverse its
economic troubles, which began in July 1997 when the country's currency,
the baht, drastically fell in value. The financial crisis spread across
Asia and then the world. The region is just now recovering. The IMF and the
government have predicted Thailand's economy, which contracted about 7
percent in 1998, will grow by about 1.5 percent in 1999.

Albright also was meeting with Foreign Minister Surin Pitsuwan.

She paid a call Wednesday on the 71-year-old King Bhumibol Adulyadej, the
Thai head of state and a revered figure.

When the financial crisis struck, Thai officials were upset with the
Clinton administration for not contributing to a rescue package. But the
rift was repaired after Chuan visited President Clinton at the White House
last year and the U.S. administration agreed to let Thailand drop its $392
million purchase of eight F-18 jet fighters, which the country could no
longer afford. The U.S. Marine Corps took the planes instead.

Albright will encourage Thai leaders to move ahead on restructuring the
banking system and corporate debt by approving 11 pending pieces of
legislation related to bankruptcy and foreclosure, U.S. officials said.

Before coming to Bangkok, Albright visited the Hong Mai village in northern
Thailand and praised the Thai people for rejecting "the dead end of drugs"
by growing vegetables and flowers instead of poppies.

She also criticized neighboring Myanmar, formerly known as Burma, for
continuing to grow the crop from which heroin is derived in the "Golden
Triangle" region.

The United States has contributed $1.3 million over the past two years to
aide Thailand's drug crop substitution program, which has helped the
country reduce its production by 85 percent over the past 15 years, U.S.
officials said.

Albright, speaking to several hundred Hmong villagers at a grammar school,
gave the children a computer, a printer and soccer balls, as well as her
anti-drug message.

"The message is, we must do all we can to provide alternatives to the dead
end of drugs," Albright proclaimed. "Here in Nong Hai, you're saying no to
narcotics and yes to vegetables and flowers and computers and books."

A farmer, who didn't give his name, told Albright he had made 4,000 baht a
year, or about $100, from growing opium, but now makes 50,000 baht, or
roughly $1,300, growing vegetables and flowers instead.

At Chiang Mai, Albright talked with girls and young women who were former
prostitutes or who were saved from a life in the sex trade by the New Life
Center, a non-governmental program that provides education and vocational
training.

"It's ... essential that girls not be exploited and abused and exposed to
AIDS," Albright said. "It's very important to fight back."

AhChau MaYeu, 35, told Albright she was one of the first young women to
come to the center in 1987, escaping from a home where she had worked as a
housemaid and where the father and brother in the family tried to rape her
several times.

A member of a hill tribe, she said she was vulnerable because she didn't
speak Thai and couldn't read and write. She started her education at age 23
at the center and is now a social worker there.

"Now I can read, write and speak Thai," she told Albright.