Afghan poppy set for another big year so,.........

Condoleeza Rice to push for more troops in Afghanistan to safely haul off the bountiful harvest.

Afghan poppy set for another big year, UN report warns
By Carlotta Gall

http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/02/06/asia/opium.php

ISLAMABAD: Afghanistan will produce another enormous opium poppy crop this year, close to last year's record harvest, and Europe and other regions should brace themselves for the expected influx of heroin, the United Nations warned Wednesday in its annual winter survey of poppy planting patterns.

Cultivation is still increasing in the insurgency-hit south and west of the country, the report said, and taxes on the crop have become a major source of revenue for the Taliban insurgency.

"This is a windfall for anti-government forces, further evidence of the dangerous link between opium and insurgency," Antonio Maria Costa, the executive director of the UN Office on Drugs and Crime, wrote in the report's preface.

The report was released by the Office on Drugs and Crime on Wednesday at an international donors conference in Tokyo.

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Rice pushes for more troops in Afghanistan

Helene Cooper and Nicholas Kulish in London
February 8, 2008
http://www.smh.com.au/news/world/rice-pushes-for-more-troops-in-afghanis...

THE United States Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice, and the British Foreign Secretary, David Miliband, arrived in Afghanistan yesterday in a symbolic show of unity on the eve of a meeting of NATO defence ministers where reluctant European allies will be pressed to share the combat burden.

"Frankly, I hope there will be more troop contributions and there need to be more Afghan forces," Dr Rice said.

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