TAIWAN FINDS NORTH KOREAN DRUG LINK

Taiwanese criminal investigators believe a North Korean naval gunboat
helped supply local drug smugglers with 79kg of heroin that was seized in a
pre-dawn raid on Tuesday.

The indications of a North Korean military link in the smuggling operation
uncovered by the Taiwanese authorities will fuel suspicions that Pyongyang
is tolerating and even encouraging involvement in international crime, as a
way of earning scarce foreign currency.

News of the case broke after investigators on Tuesday arrested nine
suspects at a northern Taiwanese port and seized 198 packets of heroin with
a street value of around T$200m ( 6m).

Prosecutor Wu Tsung-kuang said the raid was the result of an almost
six-month probe prompted by reports from an informant that a local
smuggling group was picking up drugs near Korea for sale in Taiwan.

The informant said the drugs were transferred to the Taiwanese smugglers by
a North Korean gunboat in the Yellow Sea near the 38th parallel, which
divides the impoverished Communist state from South Korea.

Mr Wu said that during conversations recorded by electronic eavesdropping,
members of the group had also referred to a gunboat as the vessel with
which they would make the exchange. "Only then could we be definite that
the information we had received was correct," he said.

The Taiwanese case is likely to leave plenty of unanswered questions
surrounding North Korea's role. "Of course, we cannot say for sure that
this is the action of the North Korean government," said Mr Wu.

However, western analysts and North Korean defectors have long claimed that
the Pyongyang regime is implicated in the production and sale of heroin and
amphetamines, as well as other criminal operations such as counterfeiting.

The case promises to offer the clearest indications yet of involvement by
North Korean officials in the illegal narcotics trade.

The Taiwanese case could also add to the barriers to any rapprochement
between Pyongyang and Washington, which is seeking to establish whether
North Korea sponsors illegal activities "as a matter of state policy".