AFGHAN OPIUM CROP DECLINES, BUT NEIGHBORS STILL WORRY

TASHKENT, Uzbekistan, Oct. 19 - Opium production in Afghanistan dropped 28
percent this year because of widespread drought and a United Nations
crop-substitution program, the senior United Nations drug-control official
said today.

Afghanistan supplies an estimated 75 percent of the world's illicit opium,
and the decline was one of the few bright spots at an international
conference on drug trafficking and terrorism in Central Asia sponsored by
the United Nations Office for Drug Control and Crime Prevention and the
Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe.

Despite the decline, regional and international leaders warned that illegal
drug trafficking from Afghanistan and its rulers' links to insurgent
movements pose the major threat to the tenuous political and economic
stability of the five Central Asian nations: Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan,
Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan. All were republics of the Soviet
Union before that country dissolved at the end of 1991.

"The threat is increasing and the major reason is the situation in
Afghanistan," said Erlan Idrisov, the Kazakh foreign minister. "It is the
source of instability in the region."

An estimated 80 percent of Europe's heroin flows through the region. The
drugs come across hundreds of miles of poorly policed borders and through
remote mountain passes so high that drug-sniffing dogs are rendered useless
by the altitude, then pass through Russia. The bulk of the shipments is
heroin, concealed in cars, buses and trucks and carried by small groups of
people on foot and horseback.

This summer border guards in Kazakhstan, acting on a tip, stopped the car
of the ambassador from Tajikistan. They slit open the tires and discovered
a large amount of heroin. The ambassador was not implicated.

Col. Zhanybek S. Bakiev, the chief of Kyrgyzstan's new international
drug-control office, said last week that finding heroin is almost
impossible without tips. He illustrated the difficulty by describing a
recent incident in which border guards scouring a suspicious bus found
heroin concealed in the brakes' compressor.

Thus, in a region where most trade travels by truck and roads built in the
Soviet era lead deep into Russia, stopping drugs is a difficult task.

The conference is intended to promote cooperation on border controls and
regional security. Organizers said they want to develop a "security belt"
around Afghanistan to curb the flow of drugs and the spread of insurgent
violence, which many believe is financed by drug money.

But speakers emphasized that the republics lack the money to fight the flow
of drugs. They appealed for more aid to hire and train border guards and
improve communications and detection equipment. And some chastised the
United Nations and Western governments for promising assistance that never
arrived.

Tajikistan provided evidence that outside aid can make a difference. A new
drug-control agency established with help from the United Nations seized
1.3 tons of heroin in the first nine months of this year, about the same
amount seized in a year in the United States or Western Europe, according
to United Nations officials. Most of the seizures occurred along the Afghan
border.

Heroin is refined opium, and Pino Arlacchi, executive director of the
United Nations antidrug program, said opium production fell this year in
Afghanistan to about 3,600 tons, after doubling last year, to 5,100 tons.
While drought caused most of the decline, Mr. Arlacchi said a
crop-substitution program accounted for about one-third of the drop.