October 11, 2008	Saturday	Shawwal 11, 1429

BUDAPEST, Oct 10: Nato forces would now directly target Afghanistan’s opium trade in a bid to stop hundreds of millions of dollars in drug money from reaching Taliban-led militants, the alliance announced on Friday.

Nato has generally avoided tackling drugs, with many members fearful of compromising support from ordinary Afghans, including many poor farmers dependent on such crops for their livelihood.

But the Taliban, ousted from power seven years ago by a US-led coalition, have been reaping close to $100 million a year from the opium trade and using the funds to buy weapons to fight Nato troops.

At talks in the Hungarian capital Budapest, Nato defence ministers decided to let individual nations — on a voluntary basis — hunt down drug lords and laboratories, with the consent of the Afghan government.

The ministers agreed that the Nato-led security force “can act in concert with the Afghans against facilities and facilitators supporting the insurgency, subject to the authorisation of respective nations,” a spokesman said.

The spokesman, James Appathurai, said the agreement came with a number of conditions, most notably that it happen in line with UN Security Council resolutions and under Nato’s existing operational plan.

He declined to go into detail about the deal but said ministers would review the plan, which essentially gives Nato troops the green light to hunt down drug lords and laboratories, when they meet in Poland in February.

“Our guys are killed by the weapons bought by the Taliban, financed by drug money,” Nato Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer said on Thursday.

Nato leads a 51,000-strong International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan but the Taliban, backed by Al Qaeda fighters, are undermining its efforts to spread the Kabul government’s influence across the country. Afghanistan is a source of some 92 per cent of the world’s opium and heroin.—AFP