THE United Nations Office of Drugs and Crime has proposed the creation of a drug control mechanism to support increased intelligence sharing among Myanmar and five other Asian nations.

The mechanism was proposed by the UNODC’s executive director, Mr Antonio Maria Costa, in Beijing on May 25 at the opening of a four-day meeting of officials from the six countries, which signed a memorandum of understanding on drug control with the UN agency in 1993.

“This could enable a better exchange of intelligence on trafficking, production and money-laundering and improve regional cooperation in criminal justice,” Mr Costa said.

“Asia has a problem with the illicit manufacture of amphetamine-type stimulants, particularly methamphetamine,” he said.

“In addition, relatively few of these substances are being seized.”

Mr Costa said although opium production in Myanmar, Laos and Thailand had fallen by 82 percent last year compared to 1990, the situation is fragile.

“Progress could be undone by a market-induced reversal, the production of new drugs, or the opening of new trafficking routes, and new markets. We therefore have to consolidate the progress that has been made and take further action to prevent a spread of drug abuse,” Mr Costa said.

Myanmar was represented at the Beijing meeting by the Home Affairs Minister, Major General Maung Oo.

He headed a delegation which included the joint secretary of the government’s Central Committee for Drug Abuse Control, Police Colonel Hkam Awng, who said late last week that Myanmar was committed to cooperating with the UNODC on drug control.

“The cooperation is important in the fight against synthetic drugs,” Pol Col Hkam Awng told The Myanmar Times.

“Myanmar cannot produce the chemicals used in manufacturing those drugs; it is important to stop the trafficking of those chemicals from neighbouring countries,” he said.

Pol Col Hkam Awng said the decline in opium cultivation in Myanmar in recent years had coincided with the need to help former poppy growers find alternative incomes.

“Although the UNODC is committed to helping those farmers, they say they have funding restraints,” Pol Col Hkam Awng said.

He said the government was doing all it could to alleviate the situation facing former poppy growers.

“We also receive a good level of assistance from China,” Pol Col Hkam Awng said.

The Chinese government had last year donated 10,000 tonnes of rice and 300,000 yuan (about US$20,000) for farmers in the Kokang and Wa regions of Shan State, formerly one of the country’s main opium producing areas, he said.

“Recently Myanmar and Chinese agricultural experts completed a survey on how to provide long-term assistance for former opium farmers in the two regions,” Pol Col Hkam Awng said.

A joint survey last November by the UNODC and the CCDAC found that the area used to grow opium poppies had fallen to 21,500 hectares, representing an 82pc decline during the past decade.