NATO's Jones appeals for help against Afghan drugs

WASHINGTON, Aug 17 (Reuters) NATO's top general appealed to the international community today to do more to curb Afghanistan's growing drug trade, which he said is helping finance a resurgent Taliban and fueling instability.

''It certainly cries out for more international focus,'' said US Marine Corps Gen. James Jones, NATO's supreme allied commander Europe.

Jones, briefing reporters at the Pentagon, also said NATO troops who assumed control of security in volatile southern Afghanistan on July 31 would aim to improve stability gradually in the region in the coming months.

Afghanistan is experiencing its most violent period since 2001, with U.S. and NATO forces pitted against an insurgency concentrated in the south and east.

''The international community understands that we have to have more success in the narcotics field, and we have to do that in the fairly near future,'' Jones said.

Ninety percent of the Afghan drug output is sold in Europe, with profits used ''to finance at least some part of the terrorist organizations that are doing battle with us in Afghanistan,'' Jones said.

Narcotics money is supporting violent drug cartels, resurgent Taliban Islamic militants and possibly the al Qaeda network, as well as contributing to tribal warfare, Jones said.

Jones said NATO and U.S. forces are not playing a direct role in fighting the narcotics trade and will not carry out eradication of opium poppies.

The United States has 22,000 troops and NATO 18,500 in Afghanistan supporting the government of U.S.-backed President Hamid Karzai.

Afghanistan is the world's leading source of opium and its refined form, heroin, producing 87 percent of the global supply. One quarter of Afghan opium is grown in volatile Helmand province in the south, where violence has flared in recent months.

The United Nations expects a surge in Afghan opium production in 2006 due to persistent lawlessness.

The drug trade is considered a prime threat to US-led efforts to rebuild Afghanistan following the 2001 toppling of the hard-line Islamist Taliban government that had harbored al Qaeda, responsible for the Sept. 11 attacks on America.

Jones acknowledged guerrilla attacks had increased, but said that with the arrival of NATO troops the south will ''gradually over the next several months become a little bit more stable.'' The Taliban and drug gangs have operated unchecked in the south for years and are putting up fierce resistance.

Guerrillas have used car and roadside bombs like those used against US forces in Iraq, and carried out assassinations.

Jones is due to retire from his NATO post and as head of the US military's European Command, most likely in December.

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