KABUL, Nov 28: Afghanistan, Iran and Pakistan on Monday agreed to bolster regional cooperation to combat drug smuggling at a time when the cultivation of illicit opium poppy is increasing despite the presence of US-led Nato forces in the country.

Afghanistan provides about 90 per cent of the world’s opium, the raw ingredient used to make heroin, and the UN and Afghan government have long tried to wean the country off the lucrative crop.

The largest areas of opium poppy cultivation are in the violent south of the country, where it can be hard to make money on legal crops and where criminal networks exist to buy and sell the poppy crop.

“Despite a decade of initiatives by the Afghans and international community, opium production is increasing,” said Yuri Fedotov, executive director of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime. “This situation can’t continue.”

Most of the opium from Afghanistan is shipped through Iran and Pakistan, and the three countries have for the past four years been involved in an UN-sponsored initiative to set up joint planning cells in each country to coordinate their efforts. They pledged to bolster joint operations targeting smugglers and the networks they use to get the drug to the international marketplace.

“Iran is a transit route and the production of drugs in Afghanistan is on the increase,” said Iranian Interior Minister Mostafa Mohammad-Najar, who heads the country’s counter-narcotics department. “The reason is high demand.”

Ministers in charge of counter-narcotics for Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iran met in Kabul on Monday at a UN organised meeting.

The UN has said that insecurity and rising opium prices have driven Afghan farmers to increase cultivation of the illicit opium poppy by 7 per cent in 2011, despite a major push by the US-backed Afghan government and international allies. Production in Afghanistan had dropped significantly in 2010 because of a plant disease that killed off much of the crop.—AP