WORLD SAID SLOW TO FIGHT AFGHAN DRUGS

KABUL, Afghanistan - The international community has been "very slow" to
combat Afghanistan's booming trade in opium and heroin, while the Taliban
has forced farmers to plant poppies to fund the rebel insurgency, the
country's top anti-drug official said Monday.

The warning came as a U.S. soldier and two civilians were wounded in a
suicide bombing, the latest in a series of militant attacks. About 1,600
people died in such violence last year; making it the deadliest since the
Taliban was ousted in 2001.

The anti-drug czar, Gen. Mohammed Daud Daud, promised a crackdown on drug
smugglers in 2006. Last year's bumper opium crop -- enough to make about
450 tons of heroin -- sparked warnings the country is fast becoming a
"narco-state" four years after the U.S.-led invasion ousted the Taliban for
harboring al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden.

The international community is pumping hundreds of millions of dollars into
anti-drug campaigns to train police units to destroy laboratories, arrest
smugglers and destroy opium crops, as well as to fund projects to help
farmers grow legal crops.

But Daud said that the United States and other nations must do more to help
eradicate narcotics in Afghanistan -- source of nearly 90 percent of the
world's opium and heroin -- especially providing alternative sources of
income for poppy farmers.

"In 2005, we were not satisfied and the farmers were not satisfied," Daud,
the deputy interior minister and commander of a special anti-drugs force,
told The Associated Press in an interview. "We need to increase
alternative livelihoods for the farmers."

He added that despite promises of help to curb poppy cultivation, the
international community's "action has been very slow," and accused the
Taliban of forcing farmers to grow opium.

"They used to fund themselves through drug sales and they are now doing
their best to continue this," Daud said.