The Burmese government has announced plans to depopulate one of the world's biggest opium-growing areas in an attempt to eradicate heroin production in the next five years.

Some 50,000 villagers in the remote Shan State, where little but opium poppies can be grown on the rugged mountains, will be relocated to new agricultural areas near Thailand.

The program is a joint effort between the Burmese government and the ethnic United Wa State Army (UWSA), which controls the Shan State. "We have designated 2005 as the year of the narcotics-free zone", said Khin Maung Myint, a liaison officer for the Wa army.

"My feeling is that only when these projects become a success, will we be able to eradicate the drug problem" he said.

Military officers and UWSA men refused to describe the operation as a "forced relocation", but acknowledged that all targeted villagers would have to leave their homes.

Drugs trafficking syndicate

The Wa are former anti-government insurgents who control large areas of northern Burma under a ceasefire agreement reached with the military in 1989.

The US State Department describes the UWSA as the world's largest drug-trafficking organisation and Southeast Asia's leading producer of heroin reaching the United States.

Both the Burmese government's anti-drug czar Colonel Kyaw Thein and Wa leaders told reporters flown into Wa territory on Saturday that they were committed to eradicating drugs from Burma within 15 years, with large areas of production to be taken out by 2005.

"We have been blamed for drugs for so long now", Kyaw Thein said. "We do not want to be blamed forever."

Correspondents say the announcement is likely to be greeted with scepticism abroad as the Burmese government is widely accused of benefiting from drug money and has few other sources of hard currency.

Burma's political pariah status has prevented it from receiving international financial aid which has helped neighbouring Thailand wipe out most of its opium fields.

New lives

Some 10,000 Wa villagers, who are traditionally some of the poorest and least educated in Burma, have

already made the move south. In an effort to provide alternative ways to make a living they have been relocated to a plantation area at Wan Hone, in Eastern Shan State, where they can produce tropical fruit and rear livestock.

Some hamlets were well developed, according to western journalists visiting the site, but thousands of recent arrivals were seen living in squalor in straw huts and eating their meals on plastic mats.

The government has said it will provide rice, salt and basic medical care until the arrivals have better homes and can start earning a living from the fruit trees.

In the presence of heavily-armed Burmese and Wa army soldiers, few of the villagers were willing to comment on their forced removal from their ancestral lands, according to the French news agency AFP.

Burmese officials say the United Nations International Drug Control Programme or other agencies have not yet been informed of the project, and there has been no reaction yet from human rights groups or Burma's political opposition.