Global Policy Forum

By Edith M. Lederer

A U.N. panel accused Afghanistan's Taliban rulers Friday of selling opium and heroin to finance its war against northern rebels and to train terrorists. It called for the United Nations to monitor the drug trade as part of an existing arms embargo.

In a report to the Security Council, the five-member panel questioned the sincerity of the Taliban's supreme leader, Mullah Mohammed Omar, when he banned the cultivation last July of poppy, the raw material used to make heroin and opium. The report said the Taliban was stockpiling the drugs, suggesting it only halted production in order to keep opium and heroin prices from plummeting.

According to the U.N. Office for Drug Control and Crime Prevention, Afghanistan's opium production was about 2,500 tons in 1998, 4,600 tons in 1999, and 3,100 tons in 2000. ``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 report said.

The panel, established to make recommendations on how best to monitor a U.N. arms embargo and the closure of terrorist training camps, said it was essential to look into the illicit drug trade because drug money was being used to buy weapons and ``finance the training of terrorists and support the operations of extremists in neighboring countries and beyond.''

Laili Helms of New Jersey, an adviser to the Taliban in the United States, said most drugs go from the area controlled by the anti-Taliban opposition in the north to Tajikistan and Russia and most arms come in through the same route. There is no arms embargo on the opposition forces. ``I think their recommendations reflect the hypocrisy with which the United Nations has dealt with Afghanistan,'' she said.

The Security Council froze Taliban assets and imposed an international flight ban on Ariana airlines in November 1999 to pressure the hardline militia to turn over suspected terrorist Osama bin Laden. Bin Laden is charged in the twin U.S. embassy bombings in Africa in August 1998. The council then imposed an arms embargo on the Taliban, which controls about 95 percent of Afghanistan, in January.

The panel called for the establishment of international teams in countries neighboring Afghanistan to beef-up monitoring of the sanctions and a new U.N. office to oversee sanctions enforcement, possibly headquartered in Vienna. The report said fuel for aircraft and armored vehicles should be included in the arms embargo.

In enforcing the arms embargo, the panel called for monitoring the movement of acetic anhydride, a key ingredient to turn opium into heroin.

The panel noted that Afghanistan supplied as much as 79 percent of the world's opium in 1999. Between October 2000 and March 2001, the panel said 12,980 pounds of heroin were seized in Europe, the majority from Afghanistan. It said that indicates the Taliban still has large quantities of the drugs in stock.

The Security Council is expected to consider the report's recommendations in early June, U.N. spokesman Fred Eckhard said.