Myanmar says Thailand helping 'drug bandits'

Myanmar says Thailand helping 'drug bandits'

BANGKOK (Reuters): Myanmar's military government launched a stinging attack on neighboring Thailand on Monday, accusing it of colluding in drugs trafficking with a rebel ethnic army.

A statement released by the Myanmar government and received by Reuters in Bangkok said Thai army shelling of Myanmar troop positions across the common border on Sunday were an "unnecessary aggravation" designed to give artillery support to the rebels.

It accused Thailand of not taking any serious steps to clamp down on the Shan rebels' drugs activities and of allowing "individual big dealers" to thrive under their protection.

The Myanmar statement coincided with an informal gathering of Southeast Asian foreign ministers in Yangon, at which Thailand's new foreign minister, Surakiart Sathirathai, was due to meet his Myanmar counterpart Win Aung for the first time.

Diplomats say the meeting will be an important test of the will of the two governments to engage on the issue of drugs, which has bitterly divided the two neighbors for years.

A senior Thai army source told Reuters "a lot of rounds" had been fired as "warning shots" over the Myanmar border on Sunday after stray mortar fire from Yangon troops had landed in Thai territory.

The source, who asked not to be identified, said Myanmar government troops were intensifying efforts to retake three bases, just 100 metres from the Thai border, that were overrun by Shan rebels earlier this month.

But the Myanmar government statement said the Thai action was excessive, and was in fact helping soldiers of the Shan United Revolutionary Army (SURA), whom it called "drug bandits".

"...genuine warning need not come in hundreds of artillery rounds daily including air-burst shells over the Myanmar troop positions," it said. "Most observers...tend to believe that the Thai Army is again coming up with an excuse to be able to give SURA an artillery fire support from across the border creating military escalation and causing unnecessary aggravation."

The statement said Thai authorities were colluding with the Shan rebels in their lucrative drugs trade.

"Various drug bandits...are being heralded as drug-busters cum freedom fighters by the Thai authorities," it said.

"Thailand has not yet been taking any serious steps in preventing essential chemicals for the production of heroin and methamphetamines to fall into the hands of crime syndicates while enabling these crime syndicates and individual big dealers not only to survive but thrive under protection and the internal drug distribution system still being untouched," the statement said.

Thailand has said the main producers of the estimated 700 million methamphetamine tablets flooding into Thailand from Myanmar each year are the Yangon-backed Wa ethnic group.

Thai Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, who recently called a highly-publicized meeting of security officials to discuss the fight against drugs, has called for Myanmar to help fight drug production.

But the Myanmar statement dismissed the Thai government's recent announcements on fighting the drugs trade as posturing.

"Regretfully, observers view Thailand's anti-narcotic policy to be going off the mark while the Thai public and the media are being taken for a ride with its anti-Wa rhetoric and its scapegoating thy neighbor policy while harboring its drug criminals and armed outlaws."