DROUGHT, BAN PUSH UP OPIUM PRICES IN AFGHANISTAN

KABUL, Aug 9 (Reuters) - Opium prices have jumped sharply in Afghanistan,
the world's largest producer of the drug, because of a severe drought and
an announcement of a total ban on poppy cultivation by the ruling Taleban,
dealers said on Wednesday.

"A kilo (2.2 pounds) of opium is now $67 while it sold for $32 before the
Taleban order," one dealer said.

"The price of heroin has more or less followed the same trend," he added.

Supreme Taleban leader Mullah Omar in late July ordered a total ban on
poppy cultivation in Afghanistan, beginning from the growing season
starting next spring.

It was the first time the Taleban had called for a total ban on the
cultivation of poppy which is processed into morphine and then heroin.

Last year, Omar issued an edict calling for poppy cultivation to be cut by
one-third, but that decree was greeted by scepticism by Western anti-drug
experts because Afghanistan's opium crop more than doubled last year to
4,600 tonnes from 2,100 in 1998.

But even before the ban call, opium output had been expected to plunge
because of Afghanistan's worst drought in 30 years had dried up poppy
fields in the eastern and southern regions of the country.

The Taleban has in the past demanded international aid for outlawing poppy
growth, saying Afghanistan's wrecked economy had forced poor farmers to
grow the lucrative crop.

Anti-drug experts say that Afghanistan has far surpassed Myanmar as the
world's largest producer of opium, accounting for more than 75 percent of
output.

Dealers reported that since the ban announcement, traders have been paying
farmers large sums of money if they agreed to ignore the ban and sow poppy.

"People are badly off here and they will do anything to survive and opium
is lucrative. Either the Taleban have to feed these people or the ban will
be forgotten," another dealer said.