OPIUM POPPIES BLOOMING IN AFGHANISTAN

UNITED NATIONS -- Despite a ban on cultivation of opium poppies by
Afghanistan's new interim government, poppies have started blooming
everywhere and the country remains a key supplier of heroin, the U.S.
member of the International Narcotics Control Board says.

Herbert Okun said Afghanistan's leader Hamid Karzai isn't to blame because
Afghan farmers need to grow something to survive and at the moment there
aren't any alternatives to poppy production.

"We need to wean the peasants of Afghanistan away from growing the opium
poppy so crop substitution is required," he told a news conference on
Tuesday. "It has to be serious and it has to be sustained. We hope it will
happen soon, and we hope it will be successful."

The Vienna-based board has called on the U.N. Security Council to promote
U.N. programs that would substitute crops like wheat, cotton and sorghum
for poppies, and to assist Afghanistan in preventing production and
trafficking in opium and heroin.

Afghanistan became the world's leading source of opium, from which heroin
and morphine are produced, in the early 1990s and remained so under the
Taliban that took power in 1996 and was ousted by U.S.-led forces late last
year. A Taliban edict in 2000 banning poppy cultivation reduced production
by about 10 percent -- not 90 percent as some claim, Okun said.

"It was a con job basically, and the drought did their work for them," he said.

Yet, the U.N. drug control program, after its annual survey by hundreds of
workers inspecting growing areas, certified that the Taliban edict
eliminated more than 90 percent of the opium poppy crop last year.
Separately, the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, which relies on
satellite imagery of poppy fields, also certified the ban was more than 90
percent successful.

Some drug specialists originally feared that huge opium stockpiles had been
held back under the Taliban, but DEA officials say no such hoardes have
been found.

While banning poppies, the Taliban held on to a three-to six-year supply of
heroin that continues to make its way to markets primarily in Europe, Okun
noted.

"Under the Taliban there was never a drug seizure in Afghanistan -- not one
single case of a recorded seizure of heroin," he added at the news
conference to launch the board's annual report .

In the report, the board said "large quantities of opiates were made
available from illicit stocks" in Afghanistan following the Sept. 11
terrorist attacks on the United States. But Okun said "plenty of it is there."

"For sure, there will be more stuff flowing out," he said.

How much depends on the spring poppy harvest and the level of international
cooperation in preventing and stopping drug trafficking, above all with
neighboring Iran and Pakistan, and also Tajikistan and Turkmenistan, he said.

The poppy planting season began in November and "poppies are blooming all
over the growing areas of Afghanistan," primarily the north and west, Okun
said. "There's no question they've started growing."

In the fight against drugs, Iran has been in the forefront and is
responsible for 80 percent of the world seizures of opium poppy and 90
percent of the heroin seizures, he said.

Pakistan's government is also opposed to drugs but its enforcement isn't as
strong, he said.

Tajikistan and Turkmenistan are trafficking routes to Russia and Europe,
the destination of 90 percent of Afghan heroin.

Russian soldiers on the Tajikistan border seize heroin, but the Tajiks
themselves probably intercept very little, and in Turkmenistan "much more
needs to be done," Okun said.