KETTAMA, Morocco (AP) - Abdelkhalek Benabdallah strode among towering marijuana plants and checked the buds for the telltale spots of white, indicating they are ready for harvest.

By September much of the crop has been picked and left to dry on the roofs of the stone-and-wood huts that dot the Rif Valley, the heart Morocco's pot-growing region. Benabdallah openly grows the crop, despite the risk: "We are regularly subject to blackmail by the gendarmes," he said as he scythed through stalks and wrapped them into a bundle.

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The country's hardline ruling party wants to legalise marijuana cultivation and give the economy a $10bn boost. Souhail Karam reports from Rabat

Mustapha Tahiri, a cannabis farmer in northern Morocco, looks forward to the day he can sell his crop without worrying about being jailed. If politicians in the country's Islamist-l ed government have their way, that isn't too far off.

"I'd be a lot happier if the state leaves us alone, stops the arrests and lets us grow the herb," said Tahiri, a father of seven whose house in the village of Beni Gmil was raided by anti-drug security forces last year. He said he'd be willing to sell his cannabis resin for 7,500 dirhams (UKP577) per kilo, about half of what he is now getting from middlemen.

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ISSAGUEN, Morocco, May 29, (AFP): "If you try to grow other crops here they will fail," says Ahmed, surrounded by lush green fields of cannabis, the illegal plant he and thousands of other poor farmers in Morocco's Rif Mountains depend on.

The country's most notorious export has been cultivated in the traditionally rebellious northern region for centuries, where the climate for growing cannabis, or "kif", is considered ideal above an altitude of about 1,200 metres.

Along the stunning valley that runs between the towns of Taounate and Issaguen, women work in the fields tending this year's emerging crop, while young dealers ply the 70-kilometre (43-mile) road in their cars looking for customers.

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Rabat, Morocco - Morocco, which has slashed cannabis cultivation by nearly half over the past four years, hopes to eradicate the main remaining area of cultivation in the northern Rif mountains by opening up the region and introducing substitute crops.

The eradication programme encourages farmers to switch to other crops, especially on fertile land where the growing of cannabis is a recent development, said Khalid Zerouali, a senior official at the Interior Ministry.

"In the ... [Rif mountain chain] we are centring our efforts on non-agricultural infrastructure and activities such as rural tourism," he said. "Opening these areas up plays an important role in reducing cannabis."

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Why It Is Hard To Stop Moroccans Growing A Lucrative Crop

ONCE you leave the tarmac road, the hillside hamlet of Mechkralla can be reached only after an arduous three-hour trek up a mule track, itself partly paid for by the European Union to encourage tourism in Morocco's northern mountain range, the Rif. Almost as soon as the main roads and towns are out of sight, the wild, rocky landscape turns into a patchwork of verdant cannabis fields interspersed with golden wheat and hot-pink oleander bushes. Along the way, women with bright striped sashes and straw hats are harvesting the tall seven-leafed plants.

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In the Cafe Berber yesterday business was brisk as customers sipped glasses of mint tea while two men in Adidas trainers and padded Nike sports jackets touted walnut-sized samples of the local cash crop - "kif", or Moroccan hashish.

The cafe, where no visitor can sit for more than a few minutes before receiving a whispered offer of a fudgy brown piece of "chocolate", lies on the bustling main street of Ketama. A tatty and lawless enclave perched high in the inhospitable Rif Mountains of north-west Morocco, it is the centre of a cannabis industry estimated to be worth more than UKP7bn a year.

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(Reuters) - The waiter spread the word quickly around the Cafe de la Plage: "Stop rolling, cops are coming!"

As the manager switched off the reggae music, customers hurriedly threw cannabis and rolling paper onto the beach in front of the psychedelically painted haunt in the Moroccan capital Rabat.

The plainclothes police who arrived took 30 people with them when they left. All are likely to be charged with possessing drugs.

"They should not be jailing smokers but those who plant cannabis. How can you jail someone for consuming a national product?" said Rachid Moudni, a debt collector visiting the cafe on the day of the raid. Moudni's scepticism mirrors that of many other Moroccans, angry with government targeting users in a country that produces most of Europe's cannabis.

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Cannabis production is expanding so fast in Morocco that it is causing soil erosion and the destruction of long-established forests, the UN reported yesterday. The illicit cash crop, which supplies most of the resin used by Europeans, is estimated to be worth ?7bn a year to trafficking networks.

As much as a quarter of the agricultural land in the Rif, the mountainous region where the plant is traditionally grown, is given over to cannabis cultivation, the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) says.

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RABAT, Morocco -- Morocco's $3.2 billion marijuana trade is under threat in the wake of suicide bomb attacks, a report said Saturday.

For a long time the Moroccan authorities have turned a blind eye to the smuggling trade that accompanies cannabis cultivation, The London Daily Telegraph reported.

The illicit crop is Morocco's biggest foreign currency earner and, according to EU estimates, is worth $3 billion a year -- making the country the world's largest marijuana exporter.

But, since May 16 when Islamic suicide bomb attacks killed 32 people in Casablanca, that may change, the Telegraph said.

"We have heard some evidence that perhaps terrorist cells that were based in Tangier were mixed up in the drug smuggling industry. It is of great concern and efforts are now being made to substantiate those claims," one Western diplomatic source told the Telegraph.

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Morocco's UKP2 billion hashish trade is under threat in the wake of suicide bomb attacks.

In the green fields around the whitewashed town of Chaouen, sickles glinted in the thin morning light as farm workers cut and stacked sheaves of cannabis, reaping this year's bumper harvest.

In the Rif mountains of Morocco, kif - the word for cannabis - covers the valleys and hillsides in profusion.

The illicit crop is Morocco's biggest foreign currency earner and, according to EU estimates, is worth UKP2 billion a year, making the country the world's largest hashish exporter.

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Trying to please Europe by persuading farmers to grow avocados is not succeeding

Giles Tremlett in Chaouen, Morocco The Guardian

Dealers off the colourful Outa el Hammam square in the medina were at their most solicitous. "Hello my friend. You want kif? I have very good stuff, 10 euros, come and smoke some."

It is a scene typical of tourist towns across Morocco: young men selling kif, the local word for cannabis, to Europeans in the whitewashed alleyways and low, Andalusian-style arched passages.

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It Has Been A Big Weekend In Morocco.

King Mohammed VI got married. The horns have been sounding, the music blaring all night and the nation's brave navy has gathered on the island of Perejil - whose name translates from Spanish as Parsley.

Known by Moroccans as Leila, the island is claimed by both Morocco and Spain, but is inhabited only by 50 ravenous goats with not a lonely goatherd in sight.

From the windy cliff opposite Parsley, it is clear that the herb that bestowed its name was long ago forcibly removed by the current tenants.

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Morocco Does Little to Weed Out a Drug That Brings in $3-Billion a Year

KETAMA, Morocco -- High in the Rif Mountains, a work crew busily repairs a roadside water main. Around the bend, another group of men just as busily diverts water from the main to irrigate an illegal but healthy stand of plants. Here, within full view of a mosque, several houses and the occasional passing cop, the men are growing cannabis sativa. Or, as it is more commonly known, marijuana.

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Morocco's cannabis farmers are enjoying a bumper harvest this year, thanks to a combination of late rains and an atmosphere of greater tolerance under the young King Mohammed VI.

The growers produce some 2,000 tonnes of hashish a year, despite demands from the European Union for the government to stop it.

"Year-in-year out, at harvest time the police would sweep through our farms, rounding up peasants," said one grower, Abdallah, after the first week of cutting cannabis on the banks of the river Laou. "This year, there've been no arrests, and the gendarmes have left us alone."

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EVERY six months, near the start of a new European Union presidency, the Europeans try to discuss their "masterplan for drugs" with Morocco, the world's largest hashish exporter and the supplier of more than 70% of the EU 's own intake. To no avail. Morocco's cannabis crop is estimated to earn it over $2 billion a year, the great bulk of the money going to the traffickers--and the officials they bribe. Moreover, it provides an income for one of Morocco's poorest and most unruly regions, the Rif mountains, and sedates its sometimes rebellious 5m Berber tribesmen.

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RABAT, Aug 12 (Reuters) - Morocco's outlawed Islamist opposition al-Adl Wal Ihsane (Justice and Charity) group on Saturday denied any involvement in smuggling cannabis and arms to Algeria.

Algeria's Liberte daily and the London-based Asharq al-Awsat newspaper reported on Saturday that Algerian security forces recently arrested an active member of al-Adl Wal Ihsane involved in drugs and arms trafficking.

"This information is baseless...Our movement has nothing to do with drugs and arms trafficking...This a pure manipulation of public opinion," Fathallah Arsalane, the spokesman of al-Adl Wal Ihsane, told Reuters.

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RABAT, March 2 (Reuters) - The European Union donated Morocco 10 million dirhams ($1.0 million) to replace cannabis plantations with alternate crops, an E.U. statement said on Monday.

``Nearly 10 million dirhams were donated to Morocco for the development of its northern provinces to favour the introduction of new business in areas most affected by cannabis culture,'' the statement said.

It said the project was part of the EU's efforts to stop drug trafficking and help develop Morocco's northern provinces by encouraging farmers to grow other crops.

According to Moroccan officials, a total 60,000 hectares are cultivated with cannabis in the remote northern Rif area annually.

($1- 9.7 dirhams)

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