U.N. WARNS KAZAKHSTAN IS CLOSE TO PRODUCING HEROIN

AKMOLA -- (Reuters) Ex-Soviet Kazakhstan, already a transit route in the
world drug trade, is close to producing high-quality heroin on its
territory, the United Nations drug program coordinator said on Wednesday.

"Kazakhstan has a huge potential to build underground laboratories to
produce heroin," Alma Yesirkegenova, coordinator of the U.N. Drug Control
Program, told a news conference.

She said that Kazakhstan, which has inherited from the former Soviet Union
large chemical enterprises, was already producing precursors for "hard"
narcotics and drug traders were supplying the reagents to heroin-producing
Afghanistan.

Drug experts say that difficulties of the transition to a market economy
are pushing many highly qualified but jobless chemical industry workers
into the illicit drug business.

"Unfortunately, we have very good chemists, and many of them are unemployed
now," Yesirkegenova said.

But while police and international programs like Yesirkegenova's cudgel
their brains over how to prevent the appearance of underground heroin
laboratories, Kazakhstan is already a large supplier of heroin to Russia
and Europe.

Cheap heroin and opium from Afghanistan make their way to the European
market across the Central Asian state's vast and sparsely populated steppes.

U.N. experts are worried by Afghanistan's production of opium, which has
shot up from 200 tonnes in 1992 to 2,700 tonnes last year. They say that
around one million Afghan peasants were involved in opium production last
year, mostly working land controlled by the purist Taliban Islamist militia.

"Untraditional" narcotics derived from Latin American coca have also
entered Kazakhstan's transit routes to Europe.

Yesirkegenova said that last year police uncovered a whole criminal web of
Nigerian citizens involved in the cocaine trade.

While monitoring drugs transit, the authorities are worried by the growing
domestic production of narcotics like cannabis in the giant Chu valley
which Kazakhstan shares with Kyrgyzstan and ephedra, a potent narcotic
plant in the Tien Shan mountains.

Last year police seized 17 tonnes of drugs, mostly cannabis and hashish, en
route to neighboring Russia, and Yesirkegenova said this was a "measly part
of the real turnover." Security services say that Kazakh cannabis is
already illegally traded in Germany.

The U.N., which will hold a special World Drug Problem session in New York
on June 8-10, said in one of the documents that Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and
Russia, along with Morocco, Afghanistan and Pakistan, were the main sources
of hashish destined for European markets.

According to government data, narcotic plants occupy 1.2 million hectares
in Kazakhstan, but there are no data on drug production.

Drugs, fast spreading among Kazakhstan's younger generation, also cause
immense social problems, Yesirkegenova said.

She said the number of drug addicts in the country of 16 million people had
reached 35,000 last year, but official statistics had reflected only the
tip of the iceberg.

"You can multiply this figure by 10 to get a real picture," she said.

((c) 1998 Reuters)

Checked-by: Mike Gogulski