DEA OFFICIAL QUESTIONS AFGHAN DATA

WASHINGTON - A U.S. narcotics official said Friday it was too early to
confirm a reported plunge in opium production in Afghanistan, a drop U.N.
officials are attributing to a ban the Taliban militia imposed last year
against poppy cultivation.

Even if American officials substantiate the drop, "I'd be more interested
in why this is happening," Steven Casteel, the Drug Enforcement
Administration's chief of intelligence, said in an interview.

Last year, Afghanistan produced nearly 75 percent of the world's supply of
opium, the milky substance drained from the poppy plant and converted into
heroin. But a team from the U.N. Drug Control Program found so few poppies
during its two-week search that officials predicted little opium would come
out of Afghanistan this year.

The U.N. surveyors crisscrossed provinces responsible for 86 percent of the
opium produced in Afghanistan last year. They covered 80 percent of the
land in those areas that had been awash in poppies; this year, they said
they found poppies growing on barely an acre here and there. Another
175,000 acres was barren.

Casteel, however, said drought could be a factor in a production drop.
Also, because opium has a shelf life "almost of an eternity," the Taliban
may have stockpiled crops to help drive up prices. One pound of opium worth
$25 several months ago is now worth "in the hundreds," and a kilo of heroin
in Afghanistan has gone from $690 to about $2,500, Casteel said.

U.S. intelligence agents will "have a good sense" of the accuracy of the
U.N. findings by the end of March, when they will get their own calculation
of the Afghan opium crop from satellite images and other surveillance
methods, Casteel said.