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.