GENEVA (AFP) — NATO Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer on Friday said the Afghan government and international aid agencies needed to do more to stifle the country's burgeoning illicit heroin exports.
"NATO has not prime or even secondary responsibility, the international community -- first and foremost the Afghan government -- they should absolutely do more and be more active in the poppy fields than they are at the moment, they are primarily responsible," he said.
De Hoop Scheffer told a conference on global security here that the broader community of development agencies had to be more involved.
"Counter insurgency is a very huge and complex operation and issue for which we need all the international organisations," he said, underlining the "inextricable" link between opium poppy production and unrest in the Taliban dominated south.
The Afghan government said Monday it had asked international military forces based there to clear Taliban-led insurgents from opium-growing areas before Afghan troops move in to destroy poppy crops.
The UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) made a similar call last month when it released a survey which showed that Afghanistan's opium production had shot up by a third over the past year to a record high.
The 26 NATO nations later told the UN drugs office that they would boost their efforts to counter the flood of heroin from Afghanistan but could not assume the Kabul government's role, according to a diplomatic source.
"NATO cannot solve the problem in Afghanistan, because the answer is development and reconstruction, nation building -- and creating in a military sense a stable and secure environment, that's what NATO's does," de Hoop Scheffer said Friday.
"NATO is neither a humanitarian nor a development cooperation agency and we should keep that in mind when I ask for stronger and better coordination."
The alliance's chief also reiterated the need for more support from the 26 members for the military operation against the Taliban, highlighting the need for more helicopter airlift capacity.
