AFGHAN MINISTER RESIGNS AFTER BIG POPPY HARVEST

Last Year's Crop Accounted For 90% Of World's Heroin Supply

KABUL, Afghanistan -- Afghanistan's counternarcotics minister has
resigned only weeks after Afghan laborers finished cultivating an
opium poppy crop that could exceed last year's record haul.

Habibullah Qaderi's resignation, confirmed by a deputy minister
Sunday, came as U.S. and Afghan officials debate privately whether to
use herbicides to reduce the drug problem.

Afghan President Hamid Karzai rejected that approach for the 2007
growing season, partly because some Afghans fear the chemicals could
affect livestock, legitimate crops and drinking water, fears the U.S.
says are unfounded. Much of the profit from the country's $3.1
billion drug trade is thought to fund the Taliban's campaign against
the government. Officials said Sunday recent clashes between police
and insurgents left 11 suspected militants dead in the south, while
Taliban fighters ambushed police in Kandahar province, wounding 15 officers.

Qaderi submitted his resignation to the president about five days
ago, said Gen. Khodaidad, the deputy minister. The resignation was
voluntary and driven in part by health problems, he said, though
Qaderi has taken a new position in Canada as Afghanistan's consulate
general. Karzai has not named a replacement.

Qaderi headed the ministry since December 2004 and survived several
Cabinet shuffles, but Afghanistan's poppy crop has ballooned under
his watch and the country's production last year accounted for more
than 90 percent of the world's heroin supply. Western and U.N.
officials have said this year's harvest could equal or exceed last
year's record crop. The U.S. has proposed spraying the crops with
herbicide as it does with coca plants in Colombia, where the current
U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan, William Wood, previously served.
Britain, whose troops are in charge of Helmand province, the world's
largest poppy growing region, has said it would support limited spraying.