Note: forwarded message attached.
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http://www.lib.byu.edu/~rdh/wwi/1917/balfour.html
http://www.petitiononline.com/uncoup2k/
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--- In [EMAIL PROTECTED], Rick Rozoff <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
[Might cut into the agency's undeclared income.
But the Company needn't worry, the U.S. Congress - 434
out of 435 House members and 100 out of 100 senators -
will sign a blank check to combat political opposition
- that is, terrorism - at home and overseas.
But their narcotics-dealing clients, from Indochina to
Afghanistan, Colombia to the Balkans, might feel the
pinch and then it will be time for the U.S.'s people's
representatives to steal billions more from their
subjects to fund 'anti-biological warfare,' etc.
initiatives.]
European Officials Fear Cheap Opium
By Paul Geitner
Associated Press Writer
Wednesday, Oct. 3, 2001; 2:51 p.m. EDT
BRUSSELS, Belgium ? Officials fear that Afghan opium
traders are flooding the markets in order to make
quick money ahead of a feared U.S. retaliatory strike
on the country harboring Osama bin Laden.
The sell-off following the Sept. 11 terror attacks has
partly led to a sharp decrease in the price of opium
in Afghanistan, the world's leading supplier. But
lower prices have yet to be felt on the streets of
Europe, where most of the opium ends up, law
enforcement officials say.
Production of opium ?a derivative of poppies and the
raw material for heroin ?has been an important source
of revenue for Afghanistan's ruling Taliban, which has
earned tens of millions of dollars by taxing poppy
farmers and traffickers.
Last year, the Taliban imposed a ban on poppy growing,
an industry the hardline rulers deemed "unIslamic."
But the ban applied only to cultivation and officials
believe drug trading continues from a stockpile
estimated at 2,900 tons ?more than the country would
supply over one year.
In a speech Tuesday, British Prime Minister Tony Blair
accused the Taliban of controlling "the biggest drugs
hoard in the world." In Britain, it accounts for 90
percent of the heroin sold, according to government
figures.
"The arms the Taliban are buying today are paid for
with the lives of young British people buying their
drugs on British streets," Blair said. "That is
another part of their regime that we should seek to
destroy."
Since the terror attacks, opium prices in Afghanistan
have plummeted 80 percent, a development experts say
is partly due to the quick selling.
"One could say that farmers trying to flee and people
who have the stocks are trying to make some cash and
go to a safe place," said Mohammad Amirkhizi, senior
policy adviser at the U.N. Office for Drug Control and
Crime Prevention in Vienna, Austria.
U.S. officials said bin Laden's al-Qaida network
benefits indirectly from the Taliban's involvement in
trafficking and could develop closer links with the
drug trade.
"Whenever you have a terrorist organization that has
to have sources of money and they are geographically
alongside drug organizations that produce money, then
there's obviously the potential for a stronger
connection between the two," Asa Hutchinson, head of
the Drug Enforcement Administration, told the House
Government Reform subcommittee on criminal justice,
drug policy and human resources.
Amirkhizi said his agency was not mandated to
determine who controls the stocks but, he added,
"there have been these linkages between the Taliban
and production because of their tax system."
The U.N. drug control agency chief, Pino Arlacchi,
said last week that the supplies probably were in the
hands of "criminal groups who are as powerful as the
Taliban and as powerful as anyone else in
Afghanistan."
The 2000 opium crop sold before the ban on new
cultivation at $30 per kilogram meant roughly $100
million for farmers. The Taliban collect 10 percent
tax from farmers ?no matter what the crop ?and 20
percent from traders.
The ban on cultivation in July 2000 sent the price
soaring to a peak of $700 last March pushing the
Taliban's take even higher.
But U.S. officials say the ban has had little effect
on trafficking because the Taliban hasn't eliminated
massive opium stockpiles from previous years.
Subcommittee chairman Mark Souder, R-Ind., called the
ban "a coldly calculated ploy to control the world
market price for their opium and heroin."
Bernard Frahi, the U.N. agency's regional
representative in Pakistan said that since the terror
attacks the price has fallen back down to $120 a kilo.
Some of that drop can be attributed to a rush of
people selling "whatever they have to get cash before
a military attack," Frahi said. Other factors pushing
down prices include border-tightening around
Afghanistan since the attacks.
In London this week, Blair's office said Afghan
traders were "unloading stock" more quickly onto the
market.
Law enforcement and drug control agencies in London,
Amsterdam and elsewhere say they haven't noticed any
change yet in heroin prices on the street, where a
gram goes for anywhere from $20 in the Netherlands to
$235 in Sweden.
Swings in raw material prices usually take months to
filter down, they say.
Doubts are also increasing about whether the Taliban
will be able to keep its cultivation ban in place if
they come under attack ?meaning prices may stay down
long-term.
"You cannot punish a tribe for planting poppies and at
the same time ask them to take up weapons to defend
you," Frahi said.
?
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