Nearly 100 kgs ivory seized in Vietnam: report

Asian Defense News: HANOI (AFP) - – Vietnamese police have seized about 100 kilograms (220 pounds) of ivory near the border with China, a newspaper reported on Sunday.

Traffic police made the discovery after stopping a car early Friday morning, said Tuoi Tre newspaper, which did not say if any arrests were made.

The police declined to comment when contacted by AFP.

State-linked media reported last year that Vietnamese police had seized hundreds of kilograms of ivory. Much of it was tusks illegally imported from Kenya.

Nearly 100 kgs ivory seized in Vietnam: report

There is a booming black market in African ivory linked to Asian crime syndicates, experts and delegates said last week at a meeting in Doha of the UN-backed Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES).

Communist Vietnam banned the ivory trade in 1992 but shops can still sell stocks dating from before the ban. This allows some to restock illegally with recently-produced items, wildlife activists have said.

Separately, security staff at southern Ho Chi Minh City's Tan Son Nhat airport on Saturday confiscated 33 live pangolins, Tuoi Tre reported.

The pangolins, also known as scaly anteaters, had been sold to customers in the country's north at a price of one million dong (53 dollars) per kilogram, Tuoi Tre reported.

Demand for pangolin meat, with its supposedly medicinal and aphrodisiac qualities, is widespread in China and Vietnam.

The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) list pangolins as endangered.