AFGHAN OFFICIALS VOW TO CUT OPIUM DESPITE PROTESTS

KANDAHAR, Afghanistan - Destruction of Afghanistan's spring opium poppy
crop will go ahead this month despite misgivings among officials from the
country's main growing area, the provincial government of Kandahar said on
Saturday.

Engineer Mohammad Yusuf Pashtoon, spokesman for Kandahar Governor Gul Agha
Sherzai, said a delegation from southwestern Helmand province, which
accounts for more than half Afghanistan's opium output, was in Kandahar to
discuss eradication plans.

Pashtoon said some Helmand officials wanted compensation to be paid to
farmers, but the Kandahar government says it is opposed to this in
principle. Pashtoon said dissent among some Helmand officials would not
halt eradication.

"Definitely they are not in full agreement with such a thing. They were
trying to ask if there was any possibility to compensate farmers," Pashtoon
told reporters.

"We told them compensation does not mean a kind of bribe that we have to
pay. Definitely we are concerned with their plight in general, but this
does not mean we should stop eradication."

In southern Afghanistan, which produces around 65 percent of the country's
opium, the raw ingredient for heroin, a million farmers relied on opium
production for their livelihoods until Taliban supreme leader Mullah
Mohammad Omar banned poppy cultivation in 2000.

Poppy growing has now resumed across the region, but the Kandahar
administration says it will send tractors, backed with troops if necessary,
to destroy the crop this month.

"It will take at least two weeks. Maybe it will go into a third week,"
Pashtoon said, adding that while major resistance to the eradication
programme was not expected, many people were unhappy about the plan.

"We don't expect active opposition, but definitely people will be not happy
with it," he said.

The U.N. Drug Control Programme said last week Afghanistan's cultivation of
opium poppies has soared since the final collapse of the Taliban in
December, and this year's harvest could be 15 times higher than in 2001,
with up to 1,900 to 2,700 tonnes of opium produced.

Pashtoon said a proposal that the poppy crop should be sprayed with
chemicals to destroy it had been rejected, as it risked damaging other crops.

The local government says that while it is against paying farmers not to
grow opium, it is working with the United Nations on a strategy to cushion
the blow for farmers faced with poverty if they cannot grow opium.

The U.N. says it is still working on the strategy. No concrete plans have
yet been announced.