Pubdate: Wed, 25 Apr 2001
Source: San Diego Union Tribune (CA)
Copyright: 2001 Union-Tribune Publishing Co.
Contact:  http://www.uniontrib.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/386
Author: Barbara Crossette, New York Times News Service

BUSH EASES AFGHAN ISOLATION

UNITED NATIONS -- In a first cautious step toward reducing the near-total 
isolation of the Taliban, the Bush administration has sent two U.S. 
narcotics experts to Afghanistan as part of an international team assessing 
how to help farmers who have ended opium poppy cultivation, U.N. officials 
said yesterday.

Secretary of State Colin Powell confirmed that he had approved the trip in 
a letter last week to U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan. Although the 
experts have no plans to meet the top leadership of the Taliban, they will 
meet with farmers and local officials.

U.N. narcotics officials reported earlier this year that it appeared that 
the Taliban, a militant Islamic group that controls most of Afghanistan, 
had all but wiped out poppy crops under a ban announced last year. U.S. 
drug experts have begun their own survey and expect to have final results 
by early summer.

Until this year, Afghanistan was the world's largest producer of opium, the 
source of much of the heroin sold in Europe.

The U.N. Drug Control Program had met resistance from the Clinton 
administration to any projects to assist Afghans in a drug-eradication program.

U.S. policy had been to isolate the Taliban and punish them through U.N. 
sanctions because of their refusal to turn over Osama bin Laden, the 
Saudi-born Islamic militant wanted in connection with bombings of two U.S. 
Embassies in Africa. The United States may now have a less rigid policy.

"The United States is prepared to fund a United Nations International Drug 
Control Program proposal in Afghanistan to assist former poppy cultivators 
hard hit by the ban," Powell wrote to Annan on April 16. "However, we want 
to ensure that assistance benefits the farmers, not the factions, while it 
also curbs the Afghan drug trade."
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