AFGHANISTAN BACK ON TOP IN OPIUM PRODUCTION

Time And Financial Aid Are Needed To Curb Soaring Cultivation, UN Drug
Official Says

MONTREAL -- Afghanistan has reclaimed the top spot as a world producer of
opium, and, despite optimistic signs, it will take several years to erase
poppy production, the head of the United Nations drug control agency said
yesterday.

While it is committed to banning opium cultivation, the Afghan
administration led by President Hamid Karzai is still weak and trying to
keep up with opiate producers, said Antonio Maria Costa, executive director
of the UN Office for Drug Control and Crime Prevention.

"We're talking about an administration which is in embryo form. It's going
to take quite some time. I'd just like to warn against easy expectations,"
he said in an interview.

"There's a sort of a race between the government and narco-traffickers who
try to produce as much as possible and take advantage of the power vacuum
created by the collapse of the Taliban and the slow affirmation of the
Karzai regime."

Mr. Costa was in Montreal for the World Forum on Drugs and Dependencies,
which has drawn 3,000 delegates.

He noted that Pakistan, a more developed country with a stronger central
government, needed a four-year campaign to eradicate its opium-poppy farming.

"I'd never seen a people as devastated, physically, psychologically and
emotionally, as in Afghanistan," Mr. Costa said.

"As a consequence, we are facing the long haul. We are facing a situation
where it will take a long time to rebuild the country."

The UN is to release its survey of Afghanistan's opium production in a few
weeks. Although Mr. Costa would not confirm figures, estimates so far
indicate that this year's harvests will yield 1,900 to 2,700 metric tonnes
of opium.

Combined with the sharp decline in opium production in Myanmar, the figures
will clinch Afghanistan's position as the world's main source of opiates.
Opium is the raw material of heroin manufacture.

Mr. Costa noted, however, that this year's crop, which was harvested
between May and July, was actually planted last fall, from September to
November. At the time, the Taliban regime was collapsing and the Karzai
government was not yet in place.

"Please, don't believe that in the DNA of the Afghans it's written that
opium poppies is their livelihood. Quite the contrary; opium-poppy
cultivation is relatively new. It started with the Soviet invasion in 1979."

Before that, Afghanistan was actually an exporter of fruits, vegetables and
spices, he noted. "Afghanistan, believe it or not, was the garden of the
former Soviet Union."

Financial aid is needed to help farmers switch to legitimate crops and to
counter traffickers who lend $300 (U.S.) to $500 per family to entice
farmers to plant poppies, he added.

Growing opium is extremely labour-intensive. "It can only take place in a
country with an extra supply of labour, which means women, children,
refugees, landless drifters," Mr. Costa said.

"I'd like Canada, as much as any other country, to help those countries
diversify out of illicit cultivations. Help us in convincing the
traditional lending agencies, the World Bank, to introduce elements which
would help finance alternatives."