UNITED NATIONS: The Head of the United Nations office on Drugs and Crime has said that Afghanistan is dangerously close to extinction as opium crop growth has reached unprecedented high levels.

Unveiling the 2006 Opium Survey, Antonio María Costa, Director of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, told a Press conference that the survey showed that the opium cultivation in Afghanistan had risen to 165,000 hectares, a 59 per cent increase this year in comparison to 2005, while the total tonnage had reached to an unprecedented 6,100.

The largest cultivation took place in the southern parts of the country, notably in the Helmand and Kandahar provinces, the strongholds of Taliban, where the government writ had almost collapsed largely due to mounting insurgency and rampant corruption.

In north-eastern provinces such as Badakhstan, increased opium cultivation is attributed to warlords and greedy officials.

Mr Costa called for immediate political, strategic and health measures, stressing that first, security and the rule of law must be improved. “Bullets rule or bribes rule.

We do have a dramatic situation which needs to be confronted. In addition, farmers must receive development assistance, which to date has not been so generous by international standards in post-conflict situations. Of course, they would be assisted on condition that they abstained from cultivating opium,” he said.

Describing corruption as a major lubricant for the opium industry, he said that the more district and provincial leaders committed themselves to opium-free activity and corruption-free governance, the more they would get development assistance.

Mr Costa said that criminal justice system would have to be involved.

As prosecutors had been trained and courthouses and maximum-security prisons built, it was imperative that the Afghan government began to arrest notorious drug traffickers and halt money-laundering, including major funding slated for terrorists, he added.