HEROIN USE, AIDS REPORTED ON RISE IN IRAN

TEHRAN, March 4 (Reuters) - Heroin use is increasing in Iran and
contributing to the spread of AIDS among addicts, a senior police official
said in remarks published on Thursday.

"This is a serious warning. There is a fear that the disease will spread
from drug users to ordinary people and lead to an AIDS epidemic," said
Brigadier-General Ali Shafiee, who heads the police anti-drugs unit.

"So far, we have only talked about the problem. We see police arresting drug
traffickers, but sometimes they are freed for unknown reasons," Shafiee told
newspapers.

He blamed the Taleban, an Islamic militia which controls most of
neighbouring Afghanistan, for contributing to increasing heroin use in the
past year.

"This is partly because of the influx of heroin...from laboratories run by
the Taleban."

The Taleban has denied repeated Iranian charges that it cooperates with drug
smugglers.

Shafiee said about 132 tonnes of drugs, mostly opium, had been seized in the
past 11 months, down 15 tonnes from the same period the previous year.

Some 70,000 drug smugglers and dealers were arrested during the period,
2,064 of them foreign nationals, mainly from Asian and African countries, he
added.

The general said more than 300 smugglers and 40 police and troops had been
killed in clashes during the same period.

Iran is a key transit route for drugs shipped from Afghanistan and Pakistan
to Europe and the Gulf Arab states.

There are around 1.2 million drug addicts among Iran's 60 million people,
according to official figures, but the head of an anti-AIDS group has put
the number at 3.6 million. Iran said in 1997 about 1,000 Iranians had AIDS.