Reprinted from the Bangkok post article "Burma moving against opium, not speed, says former envoy" by Alan Dawson.

Burma may stop opium growing in the Golden Triangle within three years but there is no clear policy against the methamphetamine trade, an American expert says after a one-month investigation in northern Burma.

Pao Yu Chan, leader of the United Wa State Army, told a documentary film crew he has ordered replacement of all opium by the end of 2005. ``Thailand should not worry about methamphetamine after 2005,'' Mr Pao said.

He would move Wa out of the most rugged hills, which only support opium, to lowland areas near Thailand in order to grow other crops.

But Barry Broman, a retired US diplomat whose last posting was in Rangoon, said Mr Pao was evasive on the specifics of his campaign against speed pills.

``He invited us back in 2006 to see if opium has been eradicated,'' Mr Broman said after leaving Burma last week.

Questioned for the Adventure Film Productions documentary Death of the Golden Triangle, Mr Pao was less specific about speed tablets. He blamed China and Thailand for producing the chemicals used to make methamphetamine.

``He also said there are non-Wa producing ya ba and selling it with fake Wa `trademarks','' Mr Broman said.

Left up in the air was how Mr Pao could assure Thailand production of speed would end in 2005.

The film crew, based in Paris, was more interested in the Burmese campaign to end production of opium. They said Burmese, United Nations and US officials agreed the campaign to end opium farming and close the heroin trade appeared serious and effective.

Kokang officials in the north pledged to switch or destroy all opium in their areas by the end of this year. ``In our visit to the Kokang area north of the Wa along the border with China, we saw no evidence of opium growing,'' Mr Broman said.

On the other hand, the crew filmed the extensive harvest of huge opium fields in Wa areas further south.

Experts in the region estimate Burmese opium production has fallen from a peak of 2,500 tonnes in 1995 to 880 tonnes in the latest harvest.

He said Burmese officials were putting pressure on the Wa and Kokang leaders who were, in turn, putting pressure on the farmers. But there were signs the crop substitution programme was inadequate. Kokang leaders said only one foreign assistance project, a Japanese buckwheat project, was in place.

Many Kokang remain unconvinced they should stop producing opium. Officials fear remote villages will continue or resume growing poppies unless there is a strong, clear substitute crop project.

Some American officials recommended moving Burma off the list of ``de-certified'' countries which were not fighting drugs. Burma is the only nation on the US list of countries ineligible to get aid to, for example, help to finance the UN crop substitution programme, which Mr Broman described as ``active but under-funded''. The effort failed, mainly because of concern over how Rangoon treated democrats like opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi.

``A few congressmen and their staffers seem more interested in putting pressure on the Burmese government than in worrying about drugs flowing into the US market from the Golden Triangle,'' Mr Broman said. Adventure Film Productions, owned and operated by Neil Hollander, are editing the documentary in Paris. Its release is likely by September.