U.N. LIMITS EFFORTS TO CURB POPPY GROWTH

UNITED NATIONS -- Frustrated by declining support from Western donors
and the indifference of the ruling Taliban, the United Nations is
winding down efforts to persuade farmers in Afghanistan, the world's
largest producer of opium, to switch to alternative, legal crops.

Ghorak, Khakrez and Maiwand, three districts of Qandahar province where
the United Nations set up pilot programs promoting alternative crops,
have recorded decreases in poppy cultivation of at least 50 percent,
according to the latest annual survey of the U.N. International Drug
Control Program.

``This demonstrates that the alternative development projects work very
well,'' the program's executive director, Undersecretary-General Pino
Arlacchi, said. Similar programs in Bolivia and Peru, he noted, led to
sharp declines in the cultivation of coca, the plant used to make
cocaine.

But despite U.N. efforts to get Afghan farmers to switch to wheat and
other crops in return for compensation, he said, ``Afghanistan remains
by far the largest opium supplier in the world.''

Now, with U.N. funding running out and opium still Afghanistan's
leading cash crop, the pilot projects will end this year.

Afghanistan's production of opium, the essential raw ingredient of
heroin, was estimated at just over 3,600 tons this year, a decline from
the record 5,100 tons in 1999.

But the drop was caused mainly by a severe drought in southern
Afghanistan, not by any effort of the Taliban to make peasants grow
something other than opium poppies. A previous decree that farmers
reduce their areas under opium cultivation by one-third has been widely
ignored by the farmers and the Taliban authorities.

Half of Afghanistan's opium is consumed as heroin by addicts in
neighboring Pakistan and Iran, Arlacchi said. The rest is smuggled to
heroin markets in Europe, usually via Turkey and the Balkans.

Opium growing is encouraged by Afghanistan's rugged, often remote
terrain and a long-running civil war that has bred lawlessness and
defiance of authority.

Opium poppies are grown in 22 of Afghanistan's 32 provinces, but six
provinces in the south account for 92 percent of the opium-producing
area.