EUROPE IS THE "MAIN" CONSUMER OF CENTRAL ASIAN NARCOTICS

KABUL. Barbara Crossette, correspondent of the New York Times, says United
Nations narcotics officials are looking at three regions that may be
tempted. Central Asia, Myanmar, and Pakistan. But the director of the
United Nations Drug control Programme, Pino Arlacchi issued Pakistan a
positive certificate.

In Pakistan, Arlacchi said: The government, working with the United
Nations, has completed one of its most successful eradication programmes
over the last two decades. "Production is down to almost zero in the last
few years", he said. Central Asia, he said, has the most potential for
poppy production. The United Nations has been working there with limited
funds to cut down trafficking in Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan and
Tajikistan.

In the last four months, more than two tons of heroin have been seized on
the Tajikistan-Afghanistan border. Barbara quotes him saying that there was
no chance that opium from other sources would compensate this year for the
loss of Afghan crops and the prices of opium and heroin will rise
substantially, with opium already worth five to seven times its usual
price. His programme helped convince the IEA that opium is a disgrace to
Islam. Chairman of the Central Asia Institute of Johns Hopkins, Frederick
Starr, told New York Times that the West, especially Europe, had been
inexplicably slow in recognizing developments in Afghanistan.

"The reduction is probably the most dramatic event in the history of
illegal drug markets, not only in scale, but also in the fact that it was
done domestically, without international assistance", he said. He added
that Europe, where most Afghan heroin was consumed, had been "stunningly
dysfunctional" in helping Afghan farmers who have sacrificed livelihoods
and in moving to prevent new fields from springing up in other poor
countries. Arlacchi said he was sceptical about including Myanmar, formerly
Burma, because Thailand and China have put tremendous pressure on the
military junta there to control narcotics production. He said the ethnic
groups in northern Myanmar who once were the largest poppy producers have
instead turned to making chemical compounds.

American experts agree that the greater problem now is synthetic drugs like
ecstasy, which are becoming increasingly popular among young Asians. "But
even if in the long term its reductions supply is a major success, it will
be sustainable only with a parallel reduction in the demand in the
industrial countries," Arlacchi said. Narcotics experts say they do not see
matching efforts in rich countries to cut use. "The prices of heroin and
cocaine have been declining over 10 years", Arlacchi said.

"That trend will now be interrupted. Prices will increase without demand
reduction and there will be more powerful incentives to cultivators and
traders." Starr, of Johns Hopkins, said special attention should be paid to
Kyrgyzstan, part of Uzbekistan and Tajikistan, as well as Xinjiang, in
western China. "Kyrgyzstan, was the largest legal producer of opium poppies
in the world during Soviet times", he said. Opium was used to make morphine
for medicinal use. "Presumably the people who made it work then are still
on the ground and unemployed.