Burmese, Thai Officials Discuss How to Combat Drugs Trade

Burmese police and Thai authorities discussed on Monday how to cooperate effectively in combating the drugs trade in the Golden Triangle area, following an attack by traffickers that killed at least 10 Burmese police officers.

Officials from the Office of the Narcotics Control Board (ONCB) in Chiang Mai, northern Thailand, took part in the talks in the Burmese border town of Tachilek.

Saturday's attack by drug traffickers on three Burmese police patrol boats on the Mekong River near Tachilek left at least 10 police officers dead and seriously injured two. Three officers are still missing.

Pornthep Eamprapai, director of the Office of Narcotics Control Board in Chiang Mai, told The Irrawaddy on Tuesday the two sides in Monday's Tachilek meeting had “talked about how to cooperate in the future to control the drug problem in the border areas.”

Pornthep said another meeting will be held next month, this time with the participation of Laos.

Burmese police sources blamed a Shan fugitive, Naw Kham, of responsibility for Saturday's attack. Naw Kham is one of the highest profile drug lords of the Golden Triangle and reportedly commands a private militia of about 30 to 40 soldiers.

The English language Bangkok Post reported on Monday that five police officers were killed when a drug gang attacked a district police station in Chiang Saen district, north of Chiang Rai, on Saturday. The dead included the police station chief, the newspaper said.

Thailand's anti-narcotics bureau seized 3.66 million methamphetamine pills in Bangkok in early February. Most of the pills came from Burma, the bureau said.

The ONCB reported that 14.3 million amphetamine pills were seized by the Thai authorities in 2009, compared to 22.1 million in 2008.

In September, the ONCB reported that significantly less heroin was seized than in the same period of the previous year, but that opium seizures were up almost eightfold, from 5,708 kg in 2008 to 40,612 kg in 2009.

The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime reported that the total area under opium poppy cultivation in Burma in 2008 was estimated at 28,500 hectares, an increase of 3 percent from the 27,700 hectares under cultivation in 2007.

Source :http://irrawaddy.org/article.php?art_id=17876

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