Pubdate: Sun, 11 July 1999
Source: New York Times (NY)
Copyright: 1999 The New York Times Company
Contact:  http://www.nytimes.com/
Forum: http://www10.nytimes.com/comment/
Author: Christopher S. Wren

U.N. Reporting Cuts in Global Drug Crops

When Pino Arlacchi, the director ofthe U.N. International Drug Control
Program, addressed the General Assembly 13 months ago and proposed
eliminating opium poppy and coca leaf cultivation in 10 years, his strategy
was greeted with polite skepticism.

The notion of getting opium and coca farmers to grow less profitable crops
in return for the promise of schools, medical clinics and roads and other
means to a better life struck many listeners as unrealistic.

But Arlacchi says that his timetable for eradicating the raw ingredients
for heroin and cocaine around the world is, if anything, running ahead of
schedule in some countries, though he acknowledged difficulties in others.

Arlacchi insisted that people are taking alternative development, as his
strategy is called, more seriously.

"The skepticism has disappeared," he said in a telephone interview from the
Office for Drug Control and Crime Prevention headquarters in Vienna,
Austria. "Now we're not discussing any more if it's possible to eliminate
opium poppy and coca production. We are discussing how to do it."

As evidence, Arlacchi cited the progress achieved in Peru and Bolivia over
the last year and a half.

In Bolivia, 34,000 acres of coca plants have been eradicated since the
beginning of 1998. He described this as equivalent to depriving the drug
market of nearly 43 tons of cocaine.

In Peru, more than 50,000 acres were taken out of coca cultivation, an
amount equivalent to pulling nearly 65 tons of cocaine from the market.

The decline began before Arlacchi began spreading his gospel of alternative
development, thanks to separate efforts by the Peruvian and Bolivian
governments, which included Peru's air interdiction of aircraft
transporting coca base to Colombia.

Peruvian coca cultivation dropped by 56 percent between 1995 and 1998,
according to the White House's Office of National Drug Control Policy.
Bolivian coca cultivation, it said, declined by 17 percent last year.

Arlacchi estimated that it will cost $5 billion over a 10-year period to
phase out coca leaf and opium poppy production. His recipe includes money
from international donations, cooperation by local governments and "a
modest degree of coercion" to make farmers switch to legal crops.

Opium poppy production in Afghanistan looks likely to increase this year,
Arlacchi said, but the ruling Taliban militia is showing more willingness
to help reverse the trend.

In June, he said, nearly 1,000 acres of opium poppies were eradicated in
Qandahar province, where the U.N. drug control agency has an alternative
development project. The acreage taken out of cultivation would have
produced about 24 tons of opium, or 2.4 tons of heroin. By bringing
alternative development to Qandahar, Arlacchi said, "We removed 2.4 tons of
heroin with a $5 million investment."

And in Shinwar and Nangarhar provinces of Afghanistan, Arlacchi said, the
Taliban promised to confiscate any increase over last year's opium harvest.
Afghanistan vies with Myanmar, formerly Burma, as the world's biggest
producer of opium.

After Arlacchi visited Laos in May, he reported that the Laotian government
agreed to phase out opium poppy production there over a six-year period.

"This is significant because Laos is the third largest producer of opium,"
he said. Arlacchi said that he promised to raise $80 million to finance
Laotian alternative development programs.

Previous opium production in Thailand and Pakistan, he noted, also dropped
off once programs were put in place to help farmers there grow other crops.

But Arlacchi said that "Myanmar has made very modest progress" in reducing
its opium output.

While coca cultivation plunged in Bolivia and Peru, it increased next door
in Colombia, the primary source of cocaine. Arlacchi, who last visited
Colombia in March, said that eradicating its coca crops depends on whether
the government can achieve peace with leftist guerrillas who control wide
swatches of countryside.

With a credible peace, he said, "We can really say that the years of
illicit crops are numbered."

But if peace efforts fail in Colombia, he said, the progress made in
reducing coca production in the Andean countries will suffer.

In addition to soliciting funds from the United States and other major
donor countries, Arlacchi has also met with James Wolfensohn, the president
of the World Bank. The bank previously did not regard drug eradication as a
development issue, Arlacchi said, but "now the World Bank body is starting
slowly to change its attitude."

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