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they are making to put their house in order. Like Burma, no immediate result can be expected at ground level, but such an approach can hardly do any harm, may do some good and would certainly be welcome to the Americans. The timing of an approach to the Lao authorities will be important and could not take place usefully until a peace settlement has been reached and the future style of government for the country determined. In considering an approach to the government which emerges from the peace settle- ment, of course due regard will have to be given to the nature of that government and its composition. The political pattern in Laos at this time is likely to shift from week to week and month to month.
Thailand.
17.
In Thailand national security is the first concern of the Government and understandably so having regard to the armed strife which has been a part of life in bordering countries for so long. The Thai Government wishes to put an end to opium growing in the country and to illicit trafficking within its territory and to this end is cooperating actively with the United States in matters of law enforcement and the United Nations con- cerning opium crop substitution projects and the treatment and rehabilitation of drug addicts. As set out in paper two, Thai- land's drug trafficking problems are exacerbated by the uncontrolled illicit import of huge quantities of opium products from Burma and to a lesser extent from Laos. Crop substitution in northern Thailand is only in its early stages embracing some thirty villages out of several hundreds which grow opium. For fear of turning the tribesmen into anti-government and probably Communist guerillas, the Thai Government will not permit law enforcement action to be taken against a village which is growing and storing opium until that village has been absorbed into a crop substitution programme and the tribesmen thereby provided with an alternative livelihood. This obviously makes good sense but it makes a large hole in the law enforcement fence which it will be difficult to close for many years at the present rate of progress.
18.
The principal law enforcement unit engaged in trying to seize opium products as far north in Thailand as possible before they enter the multifarious clandestine trafficking streams is the joint Thai/American Special Narcotics Organisation - S.N.O. An organisation of less than fifty Thai Officers posted at five locations given impetus by a handful of B.N.D.D. and U.S. Customs Officers and with other forces available upon demand to conduct ambush and seizure operations, this unit has made a number of spectacular seizures since its founding a year ago. Undoubtedly its existence has caused the traffickers to be more wary and to
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