Myanmar Launches Opium Eradication Project

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Last updated at: (Beijing Time) Tuesday, May 21, 2002

Myanmar Launches Opium Eradication Project

The Myanmar government has started launching a new opium eradication seed exchange project, said a government statement available in Yangon Tuesday.

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The Myanmar government has started launching a new opium eradication seed exchange project, said a government statement available in Yangon Tuesday.

The new opium eradication project named "Project Hell-Flower" is designed to encourage the exchange of opium seeds by farmers for alternative seeds including rice, wheat, maize and corn.

In the current pilot of the project, over 141 tons of opium seeds have been turned in by the farmers in the country's northern and southern Shan state to the authorities in their respective regions, the statement said.

According to the statement, 141 tons of seeds can cultivate almost 60,000 acres (24,281.4 hectares) of land in poppy plants that can generate about 263 tons of opium or 26 tons of pure heroin with a U.S. "street value" of 1.1 billion U.S. dollars.

The statement added that the opium seeds will be destroyed publicly later.

It quoted government spokesman Colonel Hla Min as saying that the idea behind the new opium eradication project is to provide incentives to turn in poppy seeds.

"We have been implementing ways and means to bring these farmers out of poppy cultivation in a more humanitarian way than resorting to sending in troops to destroy their sole livelihood," Hla Min said, adding that the method has so far met with success.

The declaration of the launching of the project came after Colonel Kyaw Thein, a member of Myanmar's Central Committee for Drug Abuse Control, met with high-level officials of the U.S. State Department in Washington last week including Assistant Secretary Rand Beers, who heads the Bureau for International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs, and Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Mathew Daley.

The meeting was the highest-level conversation between Myanmar and the United States since 1988 and the discussions covered Myanmar's opium eradication strategy as well as how Myanmar can come into compliance with the U.S. narcotics control guidelines in order to get cooperation from the U.S. government.

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