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paragraph 5 to act virtually as the secretary of the meetings was somewhat burdensome and that it would be more convenient for the host country on each occasion to prepare the agenda and the subsequent note of the main points agreed at the meeting. It was also agreed that it would be desirable to review the need for a meeting early in each year, when participants were likely to meet at Geneva for the Narcotics Commission; this would enable provisional agreement to be reached on an agenda and date and venue for the meeting.

TRAFFICKING IN SOUTH-EAST ASIA AND INTO HONG KONG (Items 2, 5 and 6)

7. Mr Rolph gave an account of the present position in Hong Kong. He referred to the work which had been done in the last eighteen months to develop an organised and panoramic response to the problems of drug abuse in Hong Kong and said that this had now reached a stage of action upon the basis of a White Paper. He considered that so far as law enforcement was concerned the action of the Hong Kong Government was beginning to show results. This could be attributed to a number of factors. In the Colony they had had substantial successes against the syndicates by developing their intelligence-gathering activities in conjunction with the expansion and re-organisation of the Narcotics Bureau. The price of heroin on the streets was now very high and there was an extreme shortage of morphine base. But their successes at home were to be attributed to a great extent to successes in South-East Asia. Since the meeting last June, the trawler traffic which had bee such a cause of concern had virtually ceased. The activities of the Burmese military authorities against the insurgents at the start of the supply line to Hong Kong, the work of the SNO programme in Thailand and the effectiveness of Thai police activity were making themselves felt. He paid tribute to the develoring international co-operation in this field betweer agencies in South-East Asia, particularly with respect to the Thai Police Service. Hong Kong had gained substantial benefit from the posting of Mr Law in the British Embassy in Bangkok. Now that the trawler traffic had ceased, pattern,so far as they could determine, was that opium was coming into Hong Kong in merchant ships, while morphine base came into the airport at Kai Tak. Their information was that the amount of heroin exported from Hong Kong was small, and that the traffic was not organised. George Belk, who had been one of the most vigorous critics at the meeting in Hong Kong June, paid unsolicited tribute to the

lastun activities of the Hong Kong Government over the last year.

the

8. Walter Yates, Chief of the Far East Section of the International Operations Division of the DEA, gave a general account of the DEA enforcement response in South-East Asia. (Yates seems a relatively inexperienced officer in this field.) The new features in this appeared to be the increasing emphasis that the US was giving to supporting domestic activity in Thailand and Laos. He referred to the growth of the Special Narcotics Operation in Thailand; the number of offices was being increased from 5 to 7 in Northern Thailand, and a new office was being opened in Southern Thailand to cover the Thai-Malaysian border The Thai Police had been encouraged to establish a Metropolitan Narcotics Unit in Bangkok, staffed with Thai policemen, which was to have special training and facilities in developing an organised response to narcotics law enforcement. This appeared to be the prototype of an operational intelligence unit with appropriate indices and record-keeping capabilities, In Laos, the response had been through the Special Investigation Group (GSI) which had been set up in 1972. This had been aimed at rooting out corruption in the military, in the police and in the Government, and now that this first task was over, a possible reorganisation was envisaged which would give the Laotian national police a larger role. Comparatively speaking, the SNO programme had been more successful than the GSI, taking out something like 25 tons of raw opium in its period of operation, as against 11⁄2 tons, but this might be attributed as much as anything to availability in the respective countries.

9.

John Doyle, the Deputy Regional Director in Bangkok, spoke specifically about the Thai effort. He agreed with Rolph that there had been an improvement in co-operation in the region over the last year, and that this had paid dividends. He saw a bright future for the Bangkok Metropolitan Narcotics Unit; the DEA agents would in the

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