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. - --- MAP posted-by: Alex