YANGON - MYANMAR police arrested 277 drug traffickers last month, state media reported on Wednesday, as the world's second-largest opium producer sought to show it was cracking down on the narcotics trade.

The New Light of Myanmar newspaper said authorities also seized more than 50 kilograms of opium, 2.32 kilograms of heroin, 120,000 stimulant tablets, and chemicals used to make drugs.

'Action was taken against 277 - 210 men and 67 women - in 192 drug-related cases in December 2008,' the junta-run paper said.

Myanmar's mountainous and lawless border regions once hid vast poppy fields which fed most of the world's opium habit well into the 1990s.

Under pressure from governments including close ally China, Myanmar eventually began a campaign in the 1990s to eradicate the crop, and soon Afghanistan took over as the world's top opium producer.

Military-run Myanmar has vowed to be drugs-free by 2014, but despite a few years of steep decline the UN Office on Drugs and Crime said opium production in Myanmar shot up 46 percent from 2006 to 2007.

The UN report blamed high-level collusion and corruption for the rise, while activists across the border in Thailand say crop substitution programmes for poor farmers have not been successful.

The military-ruled nation, meanwhile, has become a hub for methamphetamine production, experts say.

US authorities said in November they had frozen the assets of 26 individuals and 17 firms tied to drug trafficking in Myanmar and prohibited US citizens from dealing with them. -- AFP

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