THAI PM LAUNCHES YET ANOTHER WAR, HIS 2ND ON DRUGS

Thailand's Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, undaunted by an
avalanche of criticism after more than 2,500 people were killed in his
first war on drugs, launched another one on Monday, vowing to destroy
drug bosses.

"We have to take serious actions against them because these wicked
diseases never die," Thaksin said.

"We will continue our drastic actions against those I see as
destroyers of everything from the future of our nation, our economy
and our society. Many families have fallen apart because of them," he
told hundreds of law enforcers and volunteers.

Thaksin ordered school principals to keep a close eye on their
students and village chiefs to monitor unemployed or uneducated
youths, the main targets of drug dealers.

"When we've found out these people have become drug addicts, they need
to be treated right away otherwise they would become peddlers, using
the money they make to fund their drugs," he said.

Thai and foreign rights groups accuse Thai police of assassinating
drug suspects during a 10-month war on drugs last year. The government
says most of those killed were victims of warfare between drug gangs
or killed in self defence.

The government's own Human Rights Commission said in its annual report
in August the anti-drugs war had "destroyed the rights to live of more
than 2,500 people without fair trials under the principles of
democracy and rule of law".

Krisana Polanan, head of the Narcotics Control Board, implied on
Monday some of that was true.

He was asked by journalists if there would be extra-judicial killings
this time.

"It depends on the circumstances," he replied. "There won't be many
this time because we have done that in the first war and we don't
think there will be many left."

The main weapons in the current drive would be to employ legal
processes, including anti-money laundering and tax evasion laws,
Polanan said.

The targets were to destroy the networks and seize the assets of 1,100
large drug dealers and 28,000 peddlers, and Thaksin had expected them
to be 80 percent met, the government said in a statement.

Thaksin describes his leadership style as being like a chief executive
but is accused by critics of authoritarian tendencies.

On Monday, he said the war on drugs was the most popular of his
campaigns because people feared abuse of drugs !X most commonly these
days, amphetamines !X could hit their families at any time.

The war was aimed mainly at dealers of methamphetamines, a synthetic
stimulant known in Thai as "ya ba", or crazy medicine. This was made
in jungle laboratories in Myanmar which had previously made heroin
before it went out of fashion.

Now, other types of narcotics from other countries were flooding
Thailand, Thaksin said.

Ketamine, a so-called date-rape drug, was being smuggled from Cambodia
because the government there did not consider it a narcotic, he said.

Ecstasy was being smuggled in from Malaysia and Africans brought in
cocaine through Bangkok airport, Thaksin said.