NATO will combat Afghan drug trade

Aim is to help cut funds for Taliban

BUDAPEST - NATO defense ministers agreed yesterday to allow troops operating in Afghanistan to attack drug lords and their networks supporting the escalating insurgency in the country.

The agreement was strongly pushed by the United States, which has identified opium trafficking in Afghanistan as a primary target in the stepped-up battle against the Taliban insurgency that American commanders have begun mapping out in recent weeks.

But the accord also accommodates objections from some of the 26 NATO nations that contribute troops to the 50,000-man NATO force. Attacks on drug "facilities and facilitators supporting the insurgency" will occur only if the NATO and Afghan troops involved have the authorization of their own governments, a provision that will allow dissenting nations to opt out of counter-narcotics strikes.

The compromise appeared to satisfy the two US officials who pushed the case for the new policy at a meeting here, Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates and General John Craddock, the supreme NATO commander. Afterward, Gates said that the accord would allow "some to do things that others did not want to do," and added, "It's better than nothing."

On the drug policy, the United States once again ran into a problem that has beset the Afghan war effort: the widely differing levels of commitment by its NATO partners, some of whom have committed troops to the effort but insisted that they remain in areas of Afghanistan where insurgent threats are low.

Reluctance to widening the NATO mandate to include attacks on drug networks has come from Germany, Italy, Poland, and Spain, among other nations.

Their fear has been that attacks on drug lords, laboratories and supply networks will further alienate ordinary Afghans who have grown wary or hostile toward NATO troops, undercutting efforts to curb the insurgency and increasing threats to NATO troops.

Afghanistan is the source of more than 90 percent of the world's heroin. The drug trade is estimated to account for about half of the country's meager economy and supports some of the nation's poorest people.