A senior anti-narcotics police officer in southwest China's Yunnan Province says the worldwide narcotics problem cannot be ended by relying on military means.

As a region adjacent to Asia's "Golden Triangle", the world's largest drug-producing area, Yunnan has long been at the forefront of the anti-narcotics battle in China. Reporters from a number of foreign news media including the Associated Press (AP), the Washington Post, Reuters and CNN were recently invited to investigate the anti-narcotics work there.

Responding to a question on whether China had sent troops to

smash drug-making centers in northern Myanmar, Sun Dahong, deputy director of the Bureau of Public Security of the province, said the anti-narcotics departments in Yunnan had received no order from any government department for going to northern Myanmar.

"Though Yunnan Province is adjacent to the drug-making base in northern Myanmar and adversely affected by it, we never had plans to send troops or armed police there for smashing the drug-making centers," he added.

"In our view, it is no use to solve the problem of narcotics in the "Golden Triangle" or elsewhere in the world by depending on military means," Sun said.

He said previous experience has showed that all military attacks on drug production failed to yield satisfactory results. On the contrary, they lead to a booming growth in drug production after each attack.

The fundamental policy on wiping out sources of drug-making is to bring about a social change, accelerate the regional economy of the "Golden Triangle" and alter the economic structure there, he said.

The Chinese government and the Yunnan Province have joined international efforts to help the area grow substitute crops for opium poppy, he concluded.

(Xinhua News Agency, May 5, 2002)