Thaksin says Myanmar ethnic army holds seven Thais

Thaksin says Myanmar ethnic army holds seven Thais

BANGKOK (Reuters): Thai Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra said on Tuesday seven Thai officers missing along the Thai-Myanmar border since Sunday had been detained by an ethnic minority army allied to Myanmar's military government.

Thaksin told reporters the United Wa State Army (UWSA) was holding the Thais, military and civilian anti-narcotics officials, in Myanmar. All seven were safe, he said.

"I have been told that they were arrested by the Wa and the Myanmar government has promised full cooperation," Thaksin said.

Seven Thai officials from the Office of the Narcotics Control Board (ONCB) and the Ministry of Defense, including one female Army colonel, went to Tachilek town in Myanmar on Sunday after attending a drugs seminar in Chiang Mai, Thai officials said.

Tumnu Sirisingha, head of the ONCB's northern office, said the Thai officers got permission from Myanmar police to enter Tachilek to survey drugs problems in the town, opposite the northern Thai border town of Mae Sai.

Tumnu told reporters the group might have been captured because they were driving a suspicious-looking vehicle which had heavily tinted windows and high powered radios.

"The Wa may have suspected them of spying or committing a robbery, so they captured them," he said.

The UWSA is said by Thai authorities to be a major producer and supplier to Thailand of methamphetamine tablets. Officials say as many as 800 million of the Myanmar-made stimulant pills could reach Thailand this year, from 500 million last year.

Thai officials say most of the tablets are manufactured in makeshift laboratories in areas under the control of Myanmar ethnic minority groups which, like the Wa, have signed peace deals with the Yangon military government in return for relative autonomy.

The region forms part of the notorious "Golden Triangle" -- where the Thai, Myanmar and Laotian borders meet -- and is believed by international agencies to be one of the world's top heroin-producing regions.

Thai narcotics experts say production of methamphetamines is increasingly supplanting opium and heroin there as the main threat.

Thaksin has said fighting drugs is one of his government's top priorities.

Thai Foreign Ministry spokesman Norachit Sinhaseni said Bangkok had asked Yangon through diplomatic channels for help in finding the missing Thais.

Myanmar officials had said their local authorities had already sent out search parties to find the group, he said.