U.N. AND AFGHAN OFFICIALS WANT U.S. FORCES TO HELP FIGHT DRUGS

KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) - U.N. and Afghan officials have called for U.S.-led
coalition forces to help combat the booming drug trade that profits both
warlords with links to the government and terror groups fighting against it.

Afghanistan is the world's largest producer of opium, the raw material of
heroin, and last year accounted for about three quarters of the global
supply.

Production increased dramatically after the fall of the hardline Taliban
regime, which had successfully banned cultivation of opium poppies.

Afghan and U.N. officials concede that among the major beneficiaries are
military commanders who are part of the current U.S.-backed government but
in practice control their own private armies. Many were instrumental in
defeating the Taliban regime in late 2001 and have operated in tandem with
coalition forces in the war on terror.

"You have a dramatic problem here: an illicit activity which is feeding a
monster with many heads," Antonio Maria Costa, the chief of the U.N. Office
on Drugs and Crime, said in an interview during a visit to Afghanistan last
week.

"There's no doubt that in a number of provinces the commanders are involved.
It's a known fact."

Yet anti-drug experts suspect that al-Qaida and the Taliban, which have
recently stepped up resistance to the Afghan government, are also using
proceeds from the illicit trade to fund their activities.

"I'm positive that drugs and terrorists go side-by-side in Afghanistan,"
Mirwais Yasini, director-general of the Counter Narcotics Directorate, said
Friday.

Costa said he was trying to persuade the 11,500-strong U.S.-led coalition
charged with hunting down followers of the terror groups to target drug
traffickers too - a stand supported by Yasini.

"Hopefully we can build a convincing argument that the resources generated
by the opium economy are being channeled toward terrorism. I believe that's
a good reason to motivate those fighting terrorism to fight narcotics too,"
Costa said.

He said that Afghanistan produced 3,400 tons of opium last year - a huge
increase on the final year of the Taliban, but below the 4,600 tons in 1999
before the Islamic hard-liners enforced their ban.

It's not yet clear how this year's crop will compare, but Costa predicted
that the revenue from opium cultivation would probably decrease
significantly as prices had dropped by about 50 percent in the past year.

To glean more profits, increasing amounts of opium were being refined into
heroin inside the country instead of being exported to be refined elsewhere,
he said.

The wave of cheap heroin smuggled across Afghanistan's borders has alarmed
neighbors such as Russia, whose drugs control chief last week called for
more international pressure on Afghanistan to reduce the flow.

"The problem is primarily that we badly need a powerful central government
able to control all of Afghanistan," said Yasini. "Both the narco people and
the terrorists benefit from instability and chaos."

Costa said that Afghanistan was virtually rebuilding from scratch after
years of war, and had little capacity to track down and prosecute drug
dealers. He said drugs generated about $1.2 billion in Afghanistan annually,
but the budget of its counter-narcotics agency was only $3 million.