NO 'SILVER BULLET' FOR AFGHAN OPIUM TRADE

U.K. Dismisses Poll Backing Limited Legalization

OTTAWA - Britain's top diplomat in Canada has dismissed a poll,
commissioned by the international think-tank that is championing the
legalization of Afghanistan's contentious opium poppy crop, which
shows that Canadians overwhelmingly support for the use of Afghan
opium for medicinal purposes.

"It is a surprise that people reach for silver bullets," British High
Commissioner Anthony Cary said in an interview yesterday.

Mr. Cary was responding to the release of an Ipsos Reid survey of
1,000 Canadians, conducted on behalf of the Senlis Council, which
found that nearly eight in 10 Canadians (79%) want Prime Minister
Stephen Harper to back an international pilot project that would help
transform Afghanistan's illicit opium cultivation into a legal way of
providing codeine and other legitimate pain medications to the
international market.

The release of the poll yesterday comes two days after the United
Nations' latest audit of the poppy farming trade found that
Afghanistan's production of opium, the key ingredient in heroin, has
now reached record levels in the six years that western nations have
controlled the country.

Britain is a key Canadian ally in southern Afghanistan. It is
responsible for Helmand Province, where the UN report found that
poppy cultivation has increased 48%, making it a bigger opium
producer than any other single country in the world.

In Kandahar province, where Canada's 2,500 troops are stationed,
opium cultivation rose by 32%, the UN study found.

Mr. Cary noted that while opium production has been licensed in such
places as Thailand and Turkey, it took 15 years to achieve such a
system. Afghanistan simply lacks the infrastructure and regulatory
framework to cultivate opium legally and to keep it out of the hands
of drug dealers, he said.

The European-funded Senlis Council, headed by Canadian lawyer Norine
MacDonald, has been a long-time proponent of legalizing Afghanistan's
massive poppy-farming and opium-cultivation trade. Their proposals
are widely rejected by the United Nations, NATO and their various
western allies.

This week, the UN said for the first time that the illicit trade is
directly linked to funding of the Taliban insurgency that threatens
Canada and its military allies.

The Canadian government, along with its Western allies, rejects the
legalization of the opium trade, in part because the Afghan
government in Kabul views it as un-Islamic.

The Senlis survey, conducted by the same Toronto-based polling firm
used by the CanWest News Service, shows overwhelming support for
legalizing the Afghan poppy in Canada.

The poll, conducted Aug. 14-16, also found that 82% of respondents
opposed the U.S.-led policy of chemical spraying to eradicate
poppies, while seven of 10 respondents said they would be willing to
use "fair trade" Afghan-made morphine, as long as it conformed to
international standards.

The survey has a margin of error of 3.1 percentage points, 19 times out of 20.