BURMA TO TOP HEROIN PRODUCE

LONDON (AP) - Burma could become the world's biggest supplier of heroin if
Afghan growers adhere to the Taliban's ban on opium poppy cultivation, a
U.N. researcher said Friday.

Dr. Sandeep Chawla, chief of research for the U.N. drug control program,
said last year's ban by Afghanistan's hard-line Taliban rulers was highly
effective.

``Afghanistan has gone from producing 70 percent of the world's opium to
less than 10 percent,'' Chawla told a London conference organized by the
British charity Drug Scope.

During the 1990s, Afghanistan produced between 3,000 and 4,000 tons of opium
per year, followed by Burma, which produced 1,000 tons a year, and Laos and
Colombia, which produced 100 tons a year, Chawla said.

At poppy harvest time last year, Afghanistan had 200,000 acres under poppy
cultivation, producing 3,276 tons of raw opium. This year, 18,700 acres
under cultivation have produced 185 tons of opium.

The price of raw opium in Afghanistan went from $20 a kilo last year to more
than $200 this year. It was $700 just before the Sept. 11 attacks, after
which it plummeted dramatically on speculation that the Taliban prohibition
on poppy cultivation would not be enforced, Chawla said.

For the first time in 30 years, the price of raw opium in Burma is at the
same level as in Afghanistan, when usually it is up to three times higher,
he said.

Although there was no evidence so far that farmers were returning to growing
opium, Chawla said they might if political instability and widespread
poverty continued.