Myanmar to host heroin meeting

Myanmar to host heroin meeting

YANGON (Reuters): Myanmar aims to show it is serious about drug suppression by hosting an international heroin conference organized by Interpol starting on Tuesday, but critics have called the choice of venue a bad joke.

The United States and most European Union nations have said they will not attend the four-day meeting in Yangon, capital of a country that is one of the world's leading sources of heroin.

Washington said it feared Myanmar's military government would use the event -- Interpol's Fourth International Heroin Conference -- to give a false impression of its drug suppression efforts.

Another critic, financier George Soros's Open Society Institute, likened the choice of venue to holding conventions on women's rights in Afghanistan or on terrorism in Libya.