Mystery disease blights Afghan opium poppy crop

KABUL (Reuters) - An unknown disease is blighting Afghan opium poppy fields, threatening efforts to reduce the illicit drug's economic grip on the country by ramping up its price for farmers, the United Nations said Thursday.

Afghanistan is the world's biggest supplier of opium, a thick paste processed to make heroin. About 90 percent of the crop is harvested in southern Helmand province where thousands of U.S. troops are fighting an insurgency partly funded by the trade.

The international community has spent years trying to reduce Afghanistan's dependency on opium, which provides an income for thousands of poor farmers, reluctant to switch to licit crops because they are less profitable.

The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) in Kabul said it was unable to confirm what type of disease had infected crops, but expected its impact on harvests by the end of the summer to be significant.

The impact on prices, coupled with the danger it could harm legal plants, could hamper efforts to eliminate opium poppies.

"In the short-term it seems to be mother nature's way of helping," said Jean-Luc Lemahieu, spokesman for the UNODC in Kabul.

"But if farmers see their licit crops affected and, in addition, speculative opium prices stimulate cultivation to new heights then the long-term negatives will have offset the short-term positive," Lemahieu said.

Lemahieu added that samples of infected plants were still undergoing tests.

He warned the disease may hurt international efforts to purge Afghanistan of the crop because it might also damage legal fruit and vegetable crops such as pomegranates, vital for Afghanistan's agrarian economy.

"We need to be cautious not to shout victory before really knowing what the negative impact will be. It might not just affect opium fields but the alternative crops which we promote such as apricots, apples and pomegranates," Lemahieu said.

For the past two years the supply of the drug has declined and is limited to just seven of Afghanistan's 34 provinces, according to the United Nations, leading to a rise in prices.

Past efforts to eradicate poppy have turned communities against the government and foreign troops. U.S. Marines in the Helmand town of Marjah have employed a strategy of paying farmers to burn their own crops.

The disease has so far been reported in Helmand, and neighboring provinces of Kandahar and Uruzgan, according to Lemahieu.

Villagers who rely on opium poppy cultivation for incomes have in the past accused Western forces of deliberately planting diseases to wipe-out the plant.

A spokesman for NATO-led forces in Afghanistan strongly denied any involvement by the alliance in the disease.

"The allegation that NATO is somehow involved in poppy blight is absolutely ludicrous," said Major Steven Cole, a spokesman for the force.

(Editing by Alistair Scrutton and Jerry Norton)