Source: Orange County Register (CA) Contact: http://www.ocregister.com/ Pubdate: 27 Sept. 1998 Author:Christopher S.Wren-The New York Times OPIUM PRODUCTION FALLS IN AFGHANISTAN Narcotics:Despite increased cultivation,storms and quakes have destroyed much of the poppy crop. Bad weather and tensions with neighboring Iran have slashed the opium production of Afghanistan and hampered its opium exports for European heroin markets,according to a new United Nations survey. The U.N. Drug Control Program estimated last year that Afghanistan had become the world's largest producer of opium, surpassing Myanmar. But heavy rains, hailstorms and earthquakes this year have wiped out one-fourth of the opium crop in Afghanistan, said Pino Arlacchi, the program's executive director. The rugged and remote terrain of Afghanistan, its history of lawlessness and chaotic warfare, and the absence of a central government helped opium flourish in recent years while the militant Islamic Taliban movement seized most of the country. When Arlacchi visited Afghanistan in November, Taliban leaders promised to wipe out opium poppy production, even making a show of burning two tons of opium in June. They also promised to eliminate new planting in return for development aid from the United Nations, which operates a $14 million-a-year drug-control program in Afghanistan. But the latest survey, Arlacchi said, showed that poppy cultivation had increased more than 9 percent since last year and had spread to two eastern provinces, Lowgar and Laghman, where it had not been reported earlier. "The religious leader of the Taliban would cooperate with us," Arlacchi said. "But the movement is too fragmented to act." - --- Checked-by: Rich O'Grady