TALEBAN SEEKS AID FOR HEROIN-BANNING MEASURES

KABUL, - Afghanistan's ruling Taleban on Wednesday
appealed for international aid in return for the steps it has taken to
stop heroin production in the war-torn country.

"We ask the U.N. and the world to provide us with assistance in return
for the steps we have taken in stopping those people who produce
heroin here," Mir Najibullah Shams, the Taleban secretary-general for
drug control, told Reuters.

"We have fulfilled our responsibility as far as we are concerned, the
world community has to accomplish its commitments by helping us," he
said.

The Taleban appeal came a day after a United Nations International
Drug Control Programme report that said Afghanistan had overtaken
Myanmar as the world's largest producer of heroin precursor opium and
remained a source of enormous drug trafficking.

A decree issued by the Taleban last week said that all the heroin-
processing laboratories in the 90 percent of the country the movement
controls must be closed.

The Taleban said that several days ago it dismantled more than 30
heroin laboratories around the eastern city of Jalalabad, close to the
border with Pakistan as part of its drive against heroin production.

U.N. officials said opium production in Afghanistan rose by nine
percent in 1998 over 1997. Some 63,000 hectares of poppy fields
produced 2,200 tonnes of opium, sufficient to produce 210 tonnes of
heroin.

A report issued by the International Narcotics Control Board on
Tuesday said the commitment by Afghanistan's purist Islamic Taleban
movement to ban poppy growing and opiate processing was
questionable.

It also said the Taleban have sought support for alternative sources
of income for farmers to reduce the economic incentives for growing
opium.