KILLING POPPY CROP WILL PAY

KABUL, Afghanistan - With this country's vast fields of poppies soon to
flower, Afghan officials said Thursday they will embark on a novel plan to
pay farmers to destroy their crops, whether they want to or not.

Ashraf Ghani, a senior adviser to Hamid Karzai, interim prime minister,
said agents of the Afghan government will fan out across three Afghan
provinces thought to produce about 90 percent of the country's opium.

The undisclosed cost will be borne by the United States, Britain and other
Western countries, which have been pressuring the Afghan government to
crack down on poppy production.

Under the plan, the Afghan officials will offer poppy farmers about $500
per acre to destroy their plants.

If the farmers refuse, Ghani said, the officials will destroy the crops anyway.

"State power is based on the legitimate use of force," Ghani said. "We hope
it doesn't reach that point."

The initiative represents a last-ditch effort to forestall a big comeback
for poppy production in Afghanistan, which had become the world's largest
supplier of opium until the then-ruling Taliban cracked down on production,
which led to a sharply reduced harvest last year.

After the collapse of the Taliban in the fall, many of the farmers who had
successfully cultivated poppies rushed to plant again, and this year's crop
is expected to be as large as some of those in the mid-1990s.