AFGHAN PARLIAMENT WANTS OPIUM LOBBY THROWN OUT

KABUL: The upper house of Afghan parliament wants a London-based
group pushing for the legalisation of Afghanistan's huge opium crop
to leave the country, the counternarcotics ministry said Saturday.

A meeting of the upper house last week decided the Senlis Council
"should stop their activities in Afghanistan and leave this country,"
the ministry said in a statement. The international think-tank has
been pushing for Afghanistan to legalise its opium crop, which
supplies up to 90 percent of the heroin used in Europe, saying crop
eradication will never work. The group says opium production should
be licenced and the crop used to make legal painkillers for
developing countries, which it says have a growing demand for these drugs.

The upper house said the activities of the Senlis Council were
against a ruling by religious leaders against drugs, as well as the
constitution, which also prohibits their production and use.

The government and the United Nations, a key partner in Afghanistan's
efforts to cut its opium production, have long rejected the council's
ideas as impractical. In "the current circumstances, there is no
control mechanism and strong security in many areas of Afghanistan,"
the ministry's statement said. "If allowed, licencing poppy
cultivation would have helped and supported the enemies of this
country, particularly the drug traffickers."

Senlis Council country manager Guillaume Fournier said they had not
been officially told to pack up and leave. The group's message, that
crop eradication does not work, should be part of the political
debate of a democratic Afghanistan, Fournier added. Afghanistan is
trying to deal with its flourishing opium trade, which experts say is
fuelling the Taliban-led insurgency, by destroying opium fields and
encouraging farmers to grow other less lucrative crops. The United
Nations and the Afghan government have estimated the total export
value of Afghanistan's opium in 2005 at 2.7 billion dollars,
equivalent to 52 percent of the country's official gross domestic product.