Asian nations risk becoming new narcotics outposts: UN

Asian nations risk becoming new narcotics outposts: UN

YANGON (AFP): More Asian nations must join in the region's
fight against the burgeoning narcotics trade or risk becoming new
outposts for traffickers, United Nations officials said on
Thursday.

Senior officials from Cambodia, China, Laos, Myanmar, Thailand
and Vietnam are holding talks here this week aimed at improving
cross-border cooperation on drug control strategies.

The United Nations Drug Control Programme (UNDCP) said the six
nations represented East and Southeast Asia's major trafficking
and production centers, responsible for more than 75 percent of
the world's amphetamine seizures last year.

But the agency's law enforcement advisor Yngve Danling said
neighboring countries were fast becoming new outposts of the
narcotics industry.

Indonesia, Malaysia and the Philippines were being targeted
under a new plan to stamp out the illicit business, he said.
"We have to strengthen the capacity of vulnerable neighboring
countries to prevent domestic and regional trafficking."

Danling said the UNDCP would focus on improving the skills of
key anti-drug personnel and try to educate the general public in
those countries, which he said were also producers of chemicals
used to manufacture illicit drugs.

"We've also learned recently that there is great interest for
other ASEAN countries (to cooperate)... Singapore and Brunei have
expressed their interest," Danling said.

The senior officials are holding three days of preparatory
discussions here ahead of a meeting Friday of their home
ministers who will approve new drug-control strategies.

The six nations are all signatories to a 1993 pact which bound
them to work together in the war on drugs by reducing demand,
boosting law enforcement and encouraging crop substitution.

Their ministers meet every two years to evaluate the progress
of cross-border anti-narcotics projects and approve new
initiatives devised by the UNDCP.

UNDCP officials will unveil two new projects in Yangon this
week. The first hinges on cross-border law enforcement
cooperation and improving nations' capabilities to act against
traffickers.

The second is a broad-ranging public awareness campaign, said
UNDCP regional representative Sandro Calvani.

Calvani said the awareness drive would publicize the gritty
details of regional drug trafficking while examining the drug
problem without being quick to pass judgment.

"We want to try to have a better awareness program, to get
away from the simplistic approach that drugs are bad and people
should be punished, or in some places that people should be
hanged," Calvani told AFP.

"We want to show the complexity of the problem."

At the opening of the meeting Wednesday, Calvani said the
scourge of narcotics trafficking had spread from country to
country and that a coordinated response was necessary.

"You squeeze the balloon somewhere, it will reappear somewhere
else. I am confident that if we squeeze the balloon in all six
countries, it will soon deflate and the criminals' illicit
business will collapse," he said.

He added that today's drug traffickers were "inventive, fast,
innovative, daring and have very clear ideas and objectives" and
that anti-drug agencies could not continue using traditional
methods of fighting them.

Following the meeting on Saturday the Myanmar hosts -- who
have been roundly criticized for turning a blind eye to drug
manufacturing within their borders -- will incinerate a stockpile
of drugs in a ceremonial burning.