CULTIVATION OF POPPY AT PEAK IN AFGHANISTAN: UN

KABUL, Aug 20: Poppy cultivation in Afghanistan is close to record levels a
year after being nearly wiped out under the hardline Taliban regime, the
UN's Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) said in a report obtained on
Tuesday.

The assessment report, originally designed to survey the annual food
deficit in drought-stricken Afghanistan, found poppy cultivation has surged
under the government of President Hamid Karzai despite a ban and steps to
entice farmers to stop planting the crop.

According to an FAO official in Kabul an Afghan farmer can make $14,000 per
hectare of poppy cultivated land. The raw opium the farmer produces is
refined into opium and heroin that is sold mostly to Europe.

Until 2001, Afghanistan was one of the world's largest producers of opium.
The former Taliban regime outlawed its cultivation that year, but farmers
resumed growing it after Karzai came to power in December.

With the cash from donor countries, Karzai tried to ban poppy growing and
promised to provide $350 for about a quarter of a hectare of poppy
cultivated land.

His move came at a time when most opium fields were already sown and
subsequently the payment scheme failed to achieve its objectives, the FAO
report said.-Reuters