60 PERCENT MORE OPIUM HITS MARKET

Afghanistan Crop Is Large Chunk Of Boost

VIENNA, Austria -- Opium production soared to record levels in Afghanistan
this year, increasing the world's supply of the illicit crop by 60 percent,
despite assurances from the country's Taliban rulers that they are
combatting narcotics, the United Nations said Friday.

Once refined into heroin, the crop will find its way to markets in Western
Europe and the United States unless countries bordering Afghanistan can
intercept shipments, the U.N. International Drug Control Program said.

In its annual opium survey, the U.N. agency, which is headquartered in
Vienna, said Afghanistan's total production of raw opium for 1999 was
estimated at a record 5,000 tons -- more than double last year's harvest of
2,300 tons.

That brought this year's total estimated production of illicit opium
worldwide to about 6,600 tons, an increase of about 60 percent over last
year, the drug control program said. Afghanistan now accounts for 75
percent of the world's raw opium. Other major producers are Myanmar, Laos,
Thailand, Pakistan and Colombia.

"UNDCP has been very successful in working together with a number of
countries towards reducing production of illicit drugs," the executive
director of the drug control program, Pino Arlacchi, said. "Unfortunately,
this has not been the case in Afghanistan, and the results are there for
all to see."

Arlacchi called for strengthening the capabilities of countries which
border Afghanistan to interdict opium exports.

Arlacchi described Russian authorities as extremely worried that profits
generated by Afghan opium could be used by Islamic militants to destabilize
Tajikistan and other neighbors in Central Asia. He said he planned to ask
the United States and other U.N. members to draft a strategy to block opium
exports through the countries that border Afghanistan.

To compile its survey, the U.N. program employed Afghans to travel through
rural areas where opium cultivation had been reported and to interview
farmers and officials.

The United States takes a similarly pessimistic view of Afghanistan's
expanding production. But its estimates, based on a different methodology
that involves satellite imagery, are more conservative. The State
Department reported in March that Afghanistan produced 1,485 tons of opium
in 1998, still ranking first in the world. The State Department has not
release its 1999 estimate.