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Taliban Dismiss U.N. Report On Opium Stocks
KABUL, May 26 (News Agencies) - The Taliban's Foreign Ministry Saturday rejected a U.N. report that the regime had stockpiled large quantities of opium and that its high profile campaign against poppy cultivation was merely an attempt to bump up drug prices.
"The report is baseless," Taliban Foreign Ministry spokesman Faiz Ahmed Faiz told AFP.
The Taliban Islamic militia has waged a "heroic struggle" against narcotics, he said and added "this is our own decision."
"We consider it our religious responsibility to eradicate this notorious phenomenon from Afghanistan."
U.N. experts on Friday questioned the sincerity of Taliban's ban on poppy cultivation in Afghanistan, saying the value of opium and heroin stocks had risen tenfold this year.
In a report to the Security Council, they said, "if Taliban officials were sincere in stopping the production of opium and heroin, then one would expect them to order the destruction of all stocks existing in areas under their control."
The expert group was set up by U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan to recommend how to monitor an arms embargo and other sanctions the U.N. imposed on the Taliban on December 20th.
The report quoted figures from the U.N.'s Drug Control and Crime Prevention Office (DCCPO) in Vienna to show that total opium production in Afghanistan almost doubled, from 2,500 tons in 1998 to 4,600 tons the following year.
Another 3,100 tons were produced in 2000 before the supreme leader of the Taliban, Mullah Mohammed Omar, pronounced the ban on July 27th.
The data "appear to confirm the view that the Taliban has accumulated a sizeable stock of opium and heroin and wanted to stop production to prevent prices from further spiraling downward," the report said.
It noted that the average price of opium in Afghanistan jumped from $28 a kilo last year to $280 a kilo in February.
Dismissing the group's comments Faiz said: "This is their view."
"We have not been appreciated for the achievements that we have had so far in this field," he said.
"The decision to ban poppy was not designed to please somebody," he said.
Annan told reporters on Friday he had "no concrete proof" of the charge that the Taliban had stockpiled drugs.
"What we do know, from all accounts, is that poppy production has more or less been eliminated for this year, which is quite an incredible achievement in the period of one year," he said, "but we will continue to monitor that."
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