Afghan government condemns spraying of opium crops by mystery aircraft
KABUL, Afghanistan: Afghan President Hamid Karzai has lodged a protest with British and U.S. officials after a mystery aircraft sprayed herbicide on opium crops without authorization, his spokesman said Tuesday.
Villagers in eastern Nangarhar province complained two weeks ago that a plane had dusted their fields and villages with a chemical that killed their crops and made them sick.
The government ordered an investigation, which confirmed that a substance had been sprayed in two districts, probably from the air, spokesman Jawed Ludin said, and prompted a sharp rebuke from the president.
"It is not serious for us because of some health problems, it is not just serious for us because it harms the other crops, it is being taken very seriously because it affects the national integrity of our country,'' Ludin told a news conference.
The United Nations warned earlier this month that Afghanistan risked turning into a "narco-state'' because of skyrocketing cultivation of opium poppies, a business which supplies most of the world's opium and heroin.
U.S. experts who were brought in to tackle the trade, which is believed to fund militants fighting American troops here, are studying the use of crop-dusters to destroy poppy fields.
But Afghan officials have opposed the tactic, which observers warn would be deeply unpopular because of its toll on legal crops, villagers and livestock.
Ludin said Karzai held talks with the ambassador for Britain, which is coordinating the country's anti-drug effort, and other foreign officials to reinforce his opposition to spraying.
He said an investigation of soil samples taken in the Shinwar and Khogyani districts of Nangarhar was still going on and that the government had yet to discover who was responsible.
"The governments of the United States of America and Britain have assured us that they also strongly subscribe to the policy that the government has on aerial spraying,'' Ludin said.
He said Karzai received assurances that they "have never in the past and will never in the future support any aerial spraying either directly or indirectly.''--AP
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