Afghans lead world in opium growing, UN drug chief reports

September 15, 2000
Web posted at: 9:48 AM HKT (0148 GMT)

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UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) -- Despite a 28 percent decline in raw opium production this year, Afghanistan still remains by far the world's largest opium poppy supplier, the head of the United Nations drug agency reported on Thursday.

Introducing an annual opium poppy survey, Pino Arlacchi, executive director of the programme, attributed the drop from a record 4,581 tons in 1999 to 3,275 tons this year to a severe drought in poppy growing areas of Afghanistan.

Arlacchi said that his agency's programme in developing alternate crops in the Ghorak, Khakrez and Maiwand districts of Kandahar province had resulted in a 50 percent decrease in the harvest of opium, the raw material for heroin.

But although such programmes could work, he told a press conference he was not optimistic about curbing the world's drug trade by cutting production in Afghanistan, the world's largest opium producer.

"The reduction was mainly due to severe drought that ravaged the country," Arlacchi told a news conference.

Pakistan now has almost three million heroin addicts, probably the largest addict population in the world, and Iran estimates it has some 1 million addicts, Arlacchi said.

Vladimir Fenopetov, the agency's programme director for the region said experts had surveyed 125 of Afghanistan's 344 districts and found that opium poppies were grown in 123 of them, 19 more than last year.

Arlacchi said that working with the country's ruling Taliban authorities was difficult and that his group would "reduce our presence in the country."

Consequently, Arlacchi hopes border controls by neighboring states may cut down on the distribution. On Wednesday, Arlacchi and Kieran Prendergast, the U.N. undersecretary-general for political affairs, met delegates from China, Iran, Pakistan, Russia, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and the United States on ways to curb Afghanistan's drug trade.

They adopted a regional plan that calls for more border controls for drug smuggling as well as trade in chemicals needed to refine opium into heroin

Arlacchi praised Tajikistan's, which has seized 800 kilos of heroin over the last six months, as part of a programme aided by his agency and Russian border guards.

He said the amount was five times more than large European nations seized in a year.

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