Afghannistan/Burma: Drug control --

[chan@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx]

Subject: Afghannistan/Burma: Drug control -- CNN/Reuter



<bold>                  Taleban seeks aid for heroin-banning measures

</bold>

                  February 24, 1999 

                  Web posted at: 12:23 PM EST (1723 GMT) 


                  KABUL, Afghanistan (Reuters) -- Afghanistan's ruling
Taliban Wednesday

                  appealed for international aid in return for the steps
it has taken to stop heroin

                  production in the war-torn country. 


                  "We ask the United Nations and the world to provide us
with assistance in

                  return for the steps we have taken in stopping those
people who produce heroin

                  here," Mir Najibullah Shams, the Taliban
secretary-general for drug control, told

                  Reuters. 


                  "We have fulfilled our responsibility as far as we are
concerned, the world

                  community has to accomplish its commitments by helping
us," he said. 


                  The Taliban appeal came a day after a United Nations
International Drug Control

                  Program report that said Afghanistan had overtaken
Myanmar as the world's

                  largest producer of heroin precursor opium and remained
a source of enormous

                  drug trafficking. 


                  A decree issued by the Taliban last week said that all
the heroin-processing

                  laboratories in the 90 percent of the country the
movement controls must be

                  closed. 


                  The Taliban said that several days ago it dismantled
more than 30 heroin

                  laboratories around the eastern city of Jalalabad,
close to the border with

                  Pakistan as part of its drive against heroin
production. 


                  U.N. officials said opium production in Afghanistan
rose by nine percent in 1998

                  over 1997. Some 63,000 hectares of poppy fields
produced 2,200 tons of opium,

                  sufficient to produce 210 tons of heroin. 


                  A report issued by the International Narcotics Control
Board Tuesday said the

                  commitment by Afghanistan's purist Islamic Taliban
movement to ban poppy

                  growing and opiate processing was questionable. 



                  It also said the Taliban have sought support for
alternative sources of income for

                  farmers to reduce the economic incentives for growing
opium.