369 DRUG ADDICTS ESCAPE FROM REHABILITATION CENTER IN SOUTHERN VIETNAM

HANOI, Vietnam (AP) -- Police searched Saturday for 101 drug addicts still
at large from a group of 369 who escaped from a drug rehabilitation center
in southern Vietnam.

The escape on Thursday was the third mass breakout from the same drug
rehabilitation center in less than seven months.

It was triggered by the government's decision to extend the time drug
addicts must stay in mandatory rehabilitation programs to at least one
year, up from the previous three months, said an official at the center who
spoke on condition of anonymity.

Inmates in one room broke through a door and then used stones and tree
trunks to force open the doors of most of the other 26 rooms at the center
in Can Tho, 125 miles south of Ho Chi Minh City.

Police, guards and villagers captured 160 of the inmates later in the day
and 108 others on Friday, the official said.

Vietnam's government plans to send all of the country's 112,000 known drug
addicts through rehabilitation programs by the end of 2005, despite their
high failure rate. Officials say the average relapse rate is more than 90
percent.

The government has set a target of bringing down the average relapse rate
to about 60 percent by the end of 2005.