SOUTH
CHINA
MORNING
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JUNE
73
A secret meeting of the Western world's top narcotics experts will be held in Hongkong next month to design a united British American strategy to stamp out the drug kings of Asia.
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It is aimed at stopping the flood of high grade “No 3" heroin to Britain and America.
This so-called "Chinese", heroin is now the main source of the Idrug for the misfets or both coumites, and selling the deadly! powder is an underworld business worth millions of American dollars every day.
The conference will be the highest level meeting ever held in the Colony in the fight against the drug trade.
The meeting between the representatives of Whitehall and Washington will begin on June 6 and is expected to last for three days.
When asked for details about the meeting, a senior official sand yesterday: "How did you know about this? This is supposed to be secret. This is an off the record conference and no publicity is to be given to it. That is the arrangement.“
But despite the official secrecy, it was reliably learnt last night the meeting is, aimed at an all-out effort to smash the drug traffickers.
It is believed to have three main phases:
* la caprylinate ellors to stop the Hpay of drugs hom the Golden Triangle pinduction aren in Southeast Asia towards Hongkong.
To stop the smuggling of drugs into Hongkong.
To stop the manufacture of heroin in Hongkong from smuggled opium and morphine and to smash the sophisticated underworld chemists' rings which transform the bulkier drugs into heroin.
The American team will be headed by the Director of the Federal Bureau of Narcoties and Dangerous Drugs, Mr John Ingersol, who is the top narcotics expert in the U.S. Government:
He will have with him some of the undercover agents which America has stationed in Southeast Asia to stop the flood of heroin.
These men will he coming from Vietnam. Thailand, Laos, Burma, the Philippines and other countries in the region. it is understood.
The British team at the secret talks will be headed by an Assistant Under Secretary of State.
It is also believed some diplomats from British embassies in the region will also either attend the conference or be represented by their diplomatic staff concerned with various aspects of the narcotics traffic.
The top narcotics detectives from Scotland Yard will also be present.
Hongkong will be represented at the talks by the Commissioner of Police, Mr Charles Sutcliffe, the Commissioner of Narcotics, Mr Norman Rolph, senior staff from the Colonial Secretariat and others involved in the suppression and detection of drugs.
The Hongkong Government is known to be treating the conference as a matter of top-level importance. Orders have gone out to those taking part that no details are to be given to the press about the conference and that it should be held in secret.
A spokesman for the American Consulate yesterday confirmed that Mr Ingersol would be attending the meeting, but refused to give further details.
It is understood searching inquiries will be made about the ways in which drugs are smuggled into Hongkong.
There could be some dramatic decisions made behind the locked doors of the conference room in the Central Government Office, where the drugs experts will meet.
In the past. Hongkong's efforts to stop drug smuggling have come in for some American criticism.
In January. an official report of the American House of Representatives Foreign Affairs Committee claimed the “aloof" attitude of British officials in Hongkong had hampered the control of the international drug trade.
This was strongly denied at the time by Mr Rolph and others from Hongkong, who will be taking part in the talks.
In April, three American Congressmen who visited the Colony as part of a tour of Asia and Europe to probe drug smuggling, made ล report in America which was again critical of Hongkong's efforts to stop the flow of drugs through the Colony, Once again, this claim was hotly denied by the Colony's anti drugs experts.
Top Secret
meeting to
stamp out drug kings
By KEVIN SINCLAIR
U.
| WKK 19/5
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