POPPY CROP IN AFGHANISTAN DECLINES, U.N. SAYS

UNITED NATIONS (New York Times News Service) -- The United Nations' top
anti-narcotics official said yesterday that the Taliban government in
Afghanistan appears to be succeeding in slowing significantly the
cultivation of opium poppies for the first time since the radical Islamic
movement seized power four years ago.

Pino Arlacchi, the leader of the U.N. Drug Control Program, said in an
interview that initial surveys of Afghanistan in the midst of the annual
opium-planting season show that a July edict against its cultivation seems
to be taking effect.

At the same time, Arlacchi said, his agency now has amassed strong evidence
that local drug lords along the northern border with Tajikistan have
stockpiled a supply of opium -- and its derivatives, morphine and heroin --
adequate to supply Europe and the United States for three years.

"No credible policy to eliminate or reduce cultivation can work in
Afghanistan if there is not parallel destruction of these stockpiles,"
Arlacchi said.

During the next month, he hopes to send drug-control agents, many of them
Afghan-born agronomists, into the countryside to survey crops.

"But even if we have a sharp reduction in production in Afghanistan, this
will not have any significant immediate consequence for the supply of
heroin to Western markets," he said. "Reduction of cultivation is not enough."

Arlacchi said the July decision of the Taliban's supreme religious leader,
Mullah Omar, to ban all opium cultivation risked sending countless Afghan
farmers into destitution and perhaps creating political problems. But a
better military position and popular support have helped strengthen the
hand of the Taliban leadership, he said.