Pubdate: Sun, 16 Mar 2003
Source: Nation, The (Thailand)
Copyright: 2003 Nation Multimedia Group
Contact:  http://www.nationmultimedia.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/1963

THREAT ON PM'S LIFE: 'NOT US' SAYS UWSA CHIEF

Warlord of world's largest drug army denies it hired a hit man

The United Wa State Army (UWSA) chairman broke his silence yesterday, 
denying reports that he and his deputy took out a contract to have Prime 
Minister Thaksin Shinawatra eliminated for his war on drugs.

In a telephone interview with The Nation from his Panghsang headquarters in 
northern Burma, chairman Bao Yu-xiang dismissed the charges as "groundless 
rumours".

"Our group does not have the capacity to carry out such an operation," Bao 
said through his official interpreter.

Thaksin said on Wednesday that a "foreign element" had put a price on his 
head because his all-out assault on the illicit drug trade had stanched its 
business.

National Police chief General Sant Sarutanond was less guarded, saying 
specifically that it was the Wa who were plotting the assassination of the 
premier. The local press, meanwhile, claimed that up to Bt80 million was 
offered to the hired killer to take out Thaksin.

Bao yesterday reiterated what he told The Nation during a December 
interview in Panghsang - that his military is not engaged in illicit drug 
production or distribution and only makes some money from opium cultivation 
in the form of taxes, which account for a mere 4 per cent of its total income.

Drug smuggling into Thailand was the "act of individual traffickers", not 
the work of the UWSA, he said.

Bao's deputy, Wei Hseuh-kang, who commands UWSA's Brigade 171 near the 
border, has been accused of being the main force behind the millions of 
methamphetamine pills flooding the Kingdom on a weekly basis. The US State 
Department says the 20,000-strong UWSA is the world's largest 
drug-trafficking army.

A US federal court has convicted Wei, along with other Burmese warlords, 
including Khun Sa, of trafficking in heroin

During the December interview, Bao vowed to keep his pledge of turning his 
autonomous region, properly called Special Region No 2, into a drug-free 
zone by 2005, or, in his own words, "you can come back and chop my head off".

The UWSA was formed in 1989 out of the break-up of the Communist Party of 
Burma, in which the ethnic Wa made up the largest armed faction.

Shortly afterwards the newly created group entered into a cease-fire 
agreement with the military government of Burma in return for limited 
self-rule in their autonomous region in northern Shan State.

Since the surrender of Khun Sa and the disappearance of his Mong Tai Army 
from its Thai-Burmese border area in early 1996, the Wa army has been 
carrying out forced relocation of people living in the UWSA-controlled area 
in the north to areas opposite Mae Hong Son, Chiang Mai and Chiang Rai.

The Thai Army, which sees the Wa's growing presence in these newly built 
towns as a national security threat, was engaged in major armed clashes 
with the Wa militia last May. Rangoon issued a harshly worded protest, 
accusing Thai troops of violating Burmese sovereignty by crossing over the 
border to wipe out Wa positions.
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