Yangoon to pursue operations against drug lord Khun Sa

Yangoon to pursue operations against drug lord Khun Sa

YANGON (AFP): Myanmarese military officials say they will pursue operations against reputed Shan state drug warlord Khun Sa and settle for nothing less than his unconditional surrender.

The officials refused to give any details of talks with Khun Sa, although foreign diplomats said they believed negotiations had moved beyond the preliminary stage and that an accord could be expected.

Approached at an independence day banquet Thursday night, the high-ranking officers poured scorn on a U.S. announcement of a US$2 million reward for information leading to Khun Sa's capture and conviction.

"The Americans never lifted a finger to help us with Khun Sa. They refused to give us weapons to fight against him. We had to use our own resources against him and lost many lives in the process. Now they want to move in," one official said.

In Washington Thursday, the U.S. State Department called on Yangon to hand over Khun Sa for trial on drug trafficking charges. "We are determined to get him sooner or later," spokesman Nicholas Burns said.

The Myanmarese officers confirmed that government troops had entered Khun Sa's base at Ho Mong in the Shan state across the border from Thailand, meeting little resistance, and they stressed that policy on Khun Sa was unchanged.

"We have stated that as far as Khun Sa was concerned it must be nothing else but unconditional surrender... and whatever this entails under the Geneva convention," the official told AFP.

"Operations regarding Khun Sa are still ongoing and will end only when our mission is accomplished," he added. He declined to elaborate and said a news release would be issued "at the appropriate time."

Yangon-based diplomats, speaking by telephone to Bangkok, believed the main detail to be settled involved Khun Sa's personal future.

The ruling junta, officially known as the State Law and Order Restoration Council (SLORC), was sincere in insisting on Khun Sa's surrender, they held, but this did not mean the SLORC realistically expected him to accept detention.

The junta might stage a show trial, followed by an amnesty of Khun Sa, or he might simply drop out of sight in an inaccessible region along the border with Thailand, some diplomats suggested.

In any case, the end to fighting with Khun Sa's Mong Tai Army (MTA) would be a relief to the military as well as a political boon signifying that the last ethnic insurgent group had been brought into the official fold, the diplomats said.

The Bangkok Post reported yesterday that the SLORC deputy intelligence chief, Col. Kyaw Win, was expected in Ho Mong on Monday for negotiations with Khun Sa.

Some 15,000 MTA troops remained in the area but put up little resistance when government forces advanced on their bases in recent days, and few casualties were reported, the Myanmarese military official said.

"They have opted to take up the line of least resistance for the sake of their families who live there," he suggested.

The State Department spokesman said the uncontested deployment of Myanmarese troops in the Ho Mong area "appears to be the result of a successfully concluded peace agreement" between Rangoon and Khun Sa's men.

"We are concerned that this apparent political agreement could facilitate the continuing drug-trafficking operations of the Shan United Army," Burns said.

Khun Sa was indicted in New York in 1989 on 10 charges including conspiracy to import heroin following the seizure of 1,080 kilos of heroin in Bangkok in 1988.

He has denied involvement in drug trafficking, saying his forces merely collected "taxes" on smugglers operating in MTA- controlled territory to finance the ethnic Shan struggle for autonomy from Yangon.