AFGHAN GOVERNMENT SAYS IT WON'T SPRAY POPPIES

KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) -- Rebuffing months of U.S. pressure, Afghan
President Hamid Karzai decided against a Colombia-style program to spray
this country's heroin-producing poppies after the Cabinet worried herbicide
would hurt legitimate crops, animals and humans, officials said Thursday.

The decision, reportedly made Sunday, dashes U.S. hopes for mounting a
campaign using ground sprayers to poison poppy plants to help combat
Afghanistan's opium trade after a record crop in 2006.

Karzai instead "made a very strong commitment" to lead other eradication
efforts this year and said if that didn't cut production he would allow
spraying in 2008, a Western official said on condition of anonymity because
of the sensitivity of the subject.

The spokesman for Afghanistan's Ministry of Counternarcotics, Said Mohammad
Azam, said this year's effort will rely on "traditional techniques" -
sending laborers into fields to trample or plow under opium poppies before
they can be harvested. A similar campaign during 2006 failed.

Fueled by the Taliban, a powerful drug mafia and poor farmers' need for a
profitable crop that can overcome drought, opium production from poppies in
Afghanistan last year rose 49 percent to 6,700 tons - enough to make about
670 tons of heroin. That is more than 90 percent of the world's supply and
more than the world's addicts consume in a year.

The booming drug economy, and the involvement of government officials and
police in the illicit trade, compounds the many problems facing
Afghanistan's fledgling democracy as its struggles with stepped-up attacks
by insurgents loyal to the former Taliban regime.

Top Cabinet members - including the agriculture, defense and rural
redevelopment ministers - pressured Karzai to reject the spraying plan,
saying herbicide would contaminate water, hurt humans, farm animals and
legitimate produce, officials said.

The ministers also feared a violent backlash from rural Afghans, the
Western official said.

Afghan farmers have sometimes turned to violence to protect poppy plants,
which are harvested in the spring and whose profits are believed to flow
partly to Taliban militants. Police said two eradication workers were
wounded by gunmen Wednesday in western Herat province.

"We're happy with Karzai's decision. Spraying affects the animals and
vegetables, even humans," said Asadullah Wafa, the governor of the top
drug-producing province, Helmand.

"There is another way to eradicate, like launching operations through all
the districts, and I hope the international community will give us tractors
and provide more troops to destroy poppies."

U.S. officials have said the herbicide in question - glyphosate, sold as
Roundup in the United States - is safe. It would have been applied by
ground spraying rather than planes to allay Afghan fears of chemicals
falling from the sky.

U.S. Ambassador Ronald Neumann said this week that Afghanistan has
eradicated 1,483 acres of poppies so far this year - compared to none by
the same time last year.

Still, that's only a fraction of the 407,000 acres of poppies that were
cultivated in 2006, including 173,000 acres in Helmand province alone,
according to U.N. figures.

U.S. and Afghan officials agree eradication must be matched with a
crackdown on traffickers as well as programs to help farmers switch to
legal crops and get their produce to market. Few Afghan crops can be
transported far without spoiling or damage because of insecurity and poor
roads. By comparison, poppy resin, the main ingredient in heroin, can keep
for years.

Karzai's decision capped months of behind-the-scenes pressure to allow
spraying like that already used in countries such as Colombia, where coca
plants supply much of world's cocaine.