Pubdate: Fri, 21 Sep 2001
Source: Associated Press (Wire)
Copyright: 2001 Associated Press
Author: William J. Kole
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/find?203 (Terrorism)

U.N. ANTI-CRIME CZAR SAYS DROP IN AFGHAN OPIUM PRODUCTION WILL 
UNDERMINE TERRORISTS

International efforts to discourage farmers in Afghanistan from 
growing opium - a suspected cash crop for Osama bin Laden's terrorism 
network - are paying off, the United Nations' anti-crime czar said 
Friday.

Pino Arlacchi, executive director of the U.N. Office for Drug Control 
and Crime Prevention, said programs designed to get farmers to grow 
other crops instead of opium, which is used to make heroin, were 
choking off the flow of cash to terrorists.

"This will dramatically reduce the movement of heroin from 
Afghanistan to the West," he said.

Until this year, Afghanistan was the world's No. 1 source of opium 
and produced 4,000 tons annually - three quarters of the global 
supply. But there has been no sign of any new cultivation of opium 
poppy this year, Arlacchi said.

Experts believe there are still 100 tons in storage in Afghanistan. 
"But stockpiles don't last forever, and if there is no production, no 
replanting, we will see a dramatic effect on the world market," 
Arlacchi said. Already, the wholesale price per kilogram has soared 
from $30 to $500-600, he said.

To encourage programs that pay Afghan farmers to grow something else, 
the Bush administration recently gave the U.N. drug control agency 
$1.5 million.

The United Nations can take only partial credit for the huge drop in 
opium production: Afghanistan is suffering the effects of a severe 
drought that has crippled all kinds of farming. And the ruling 
Taliban, while sheltering bin Laden and members of his al-Qaida 
network, last year banned growing and using opium as un-Islamic.

Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., a member of the Senate Foreign Relations 
Committee, said in Washington that there were strong indications that 
bin Laden's group has profited handsomely from the opium trade.

Kerry called the addiction and crime created by heroin trafficking in 
the United States part of a terrorist strategy to exact "their 
revenge on the world ... (and) get as many people drugged out and 
screwed up as you can."

Arlacchi also called Friday for the swift ratification of 
international conventions he said could help the fight against 
terrorism.

Only three nations - Britain, Botswana and Sri Lanka - have ratified 
the 1999 International Convention for the Suppression of the 
Financing of Terrorism, and at least 22 countries must ratify it 
before it can take effect. The United States signed the measure, but 
Congress has not yet ratified it.

Among other things, that convention eliminates the traditional notion 
of secrecy that banks in many countries have used as an excuse not to 
cooperate with investigators who are trying to pinpoint, freeze or 
seize terrorist funds.

"These terrorists are shrewd and fanatical. They are players in the 
global financial markets," he said.
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