OPIUM PRODUCTION FALLS IN AFGHANISTAN

Narcotics:Despite increased cultivation,storms and quakes have destroyed
much of the poppy crop.

Bad weather and tensions with neighboring Iran have slashed the opium
production of Afghanistan and hampered its opium exports for European
heroin markets,according to a new United Nations survey.

The U.N. Drug Control Program estimated last year that Afghanistan had
become the world's largest producer of opium, surpassing Myanmar.

But heavy rains, hailstorms and earthquakes this year have wiped out
one-fourth of the opium crop in Afghanistan, said Pino Arlacchi, the
program's executive director.

The rugged and remote terrain of Afghanistan, its history of
lawlessness and chaotic warfare, and the absence of a central
government helped opium flourish in recent years while the militant
Islamic Taliban movement seized most of the country.

When Arlacchi visited Afghanistan in November, Taliban leaders
promised to wipe out opium poppy production, even making a show of
burning two tons of opium in June. They also promised to eliminate new
planting in return for development aid from the United Nations, which
operates a $14 million-a-year drug-control program in
Afghanistan.

But the latest survey, Arlacchi said, showed that poppy cultivation
had increased more than 9 percent since last year and had spread to
two eastern provinces, Lowgar and Laghman, where it had not been
reported earlier.

"The religious leader of the Taliban would cooperate with us,"
Arlacchi said. "But the movement is too fragmented to act."

Checked-by: Rich O'Grady