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 Headline: US
cannot curb opium output: Rumsfeld on Afghan situation
-- Detail Story
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WASHINGTON,
Aug 15: US Defence
Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has said that opium production
in Afghanistan has gone up since the fall of the Taliban
regime and he does not know how to curb it.
Talking to US servicemen and women at a town
hall meeting in Washington on Thursday, Mr Rumsfeld said
the opium production was "currently up from three years
ago or so."
"And you ask what we're going to do,
and the answer is, I don't really know. I think it's an
awfully tough problem," said the defence secretary while
responding to a soldier. Mr Rumsfeld said the Afghan
heroin was a bigger problem for Europe and Russia rather
than the US because it's mainly smuggled to the European
nations.
He said Britain has taken the lead in
trying to curb the production of opium, which is used
for making heroin, in Afghanistan because "they have had
the greatest concern about it. The United States has
offered to help the UK."
Mr Rumsfeld said he
knew that the Karzai government, the US and the other
coalition partners were concerned about the problem and
had tried various eradication methods. They even have
tried to buy crops "and to buy people out from planting
crops. And what they find is that the value is high," he
added.
"I wish I had a quicker, better, easier
answer, because it's a vicious problem," he said.
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