JALALABAD Afghanistan (
February 15, 2001 8:19 p.m. EST
U.N. drug control officers said the Taliban religious militia has nearly wiped out opium production in Afghanistan -- once the world's largest producer -- since banning poppy cultivation last summer.
A 12-member team from the U.N. Drug Control Program spent two weeks searching most of the nation's largest opium-producing areas and found so few poppies that they do not expect any opium to come out of Afghanistan this year.
"We are not just guessing. We have seen the proof in the fields," said Bernard Frahi, regional director for the U.N. program in Afghanistan and Pakistan. He laid out photographs of vast tracts of land cultivated with wheat alongside pictures of the same fields taken a year earlier -- a sea of blood-red poppies.
A State Department official said Thursday all the information the United States has received so far indicates the poppy crop had decreased, but he did not believe it was eliminated.
Tuesday,
2 October, 2001, 17:06 GMT 18:06 UK
UK drugs trade 'funds Taleban'
In his keynote speech, Mr Blair denounced the Taleban regime as oppressing Afghan people and for using their drugs trade to finance their military activities.
His comments came amid fears that Europe and America will be flooded with cheap heroin by Afghanistan's Taleban rulers to fund further attacks, ahead of military strikes by America and its allies.
Drugs hoard
Mr Blair said: "It is a regime founded on fear and funded by the drugs trade.
"The biggest drugs hoard in the world is in Afghanistan controlled by the Taleban.
Tony Blair
"Ninety per cent of the heroin on British streets originates in Afghanistan.
"The arms the Taleban are buying today are paid for by the lives of young British people buying their drugs on British streets.
"That is another part of their regime we should seek to destroy."
Last Updated: Thursday,
1 March 2007, 22:47 GMT
Afghan opium 'hits record output'
By Jonathan Beale
BBC News, Washington
Opium production in Afghanistan reached record levels last year, the United States has said.
The US State Department's annual report on narcotics also said the flourishing drugs trade was undermining the fight against the Taleban.
It warned of a possible increase in heroin overdoses in Europe and the Middle East as a result.
Poppy production rose 25% in 2006, a figure US Assistant Secretary of State Ann Patterson described as alarming.
Four years after the US and its British began combating poppy production, Afghanistan still accounts for 90% of the world's opium trade.
