NEWS FROM CENTRAL ASIA

RUSSIA WILL PIPE MORE NATURAL GAS FROM CENTRAL ASIA TO EUROPE

[Associated Press, May 13, 2007]

Russia announced on Saturday a deal to significantly increase the amount of natural gas it moves from Central Asia to Europe, a victory in a growing rivalry with the West for the region's vast energy resources. Russia and the region's main energy producers, Turkmenistan and Kazakhstan, agreed to build a pipeline from Turkmenistan through Kazakhstan and into Russia's network of pipelines to Europe.

Presidents Vladimir Putin of Russia (pictured), Gurbanguly Berdymukhammedov of Turkmenistan and Nursultan Nazarbayev of Kazakhstan also said that, with Uzbekistan, they would upgrade the entire Soviet-built pipeline network that carries Central Asian gas to Russia.

The new agreements are a blow to U.S. and European efforts to build oil and gas pipelines from Central Asia that would cross under the Caspian Sea, avoiding Russia, and connect to Europe through Azerbaijan and Turkey. The deal means that Russia would control most Central Asian energy exports, boosting its role as a major supplier of oil and gas to Europe and strengthening Western fears that Moscow could use its energy clout for political purposes.

Russia supplies a quarter of Europe's gas and is its second-biggest supplier of oil. European fears of excessive energy reliance rose after Moscow briefly halted gas supplies to several former Soviet neighbors this year and last.

Putin sought to assuage such fears. "We take our role in the global energy sector very responsibly," he said. But when asked whether others could join the new pipeline project, he answered with a curt "no." "It's enough to have three countries," Putin said.

The new pipeline's cost was not announced, but the ITAR-Tass news agency cited a 2003 estimate of around $1 billion. Other details, such as how the costs would be divided among the three nations, were also unavailable. Putin said construction would begin in mid-2008. Moscow controls the only existing export routes for gas from Turkmenistan -- the second-biggest gas producer in the former Soviet Union after Russia -- along with the main pipeline for Kazakh oil exports.

Russia bought about 42 billion cubic meters of Turkmen gas last year at $100 per 1,000 cubic meters, well below its $250 price for customers in Europe.

RECORD AMOUNTS OF OPIUM PRODUCED IN AFGHANISTAN

[SMH, with New York Times and Reuters, August 27, 2007]

Afghanistan has produced record levels of opium in 2007 for the second straight year, led by a staggering 45 per cent increase in the Taliban stronghold of Helmand province. A United Nations survey to be released today is likely to spark renewed debate about the United States' $US600 million ($728 million) counter-narcotics program in Afghanistan, which has been dogged by security challenges and endemic corruption within the Afghan Government. "I think it is safe to say that we should be looking for a new strategy," said William Wood, the US ambassador to Afghanistan, commenting on the report's overall findings. "And I think that we are finding one."

Mr Wood said the US programs for eradication, interdiction and alternative livelihoods should be intensified, but he added that spraying poppy crops with herbicide remained "a possibility." Afghan and British officials have opposed spraying, saying it would drive farmers into the arms of the Taliban. While the report found that opium production dropped in northern Afghanistan, Western officials briefed on the assessment said, cultivation rose in the south. Although farmers make comparatively little from the trade, opium is a big source of financing for the Taliban.

In Taliban-controlled areas, traffickers have opened more labs that process raw opium into heroin, vastly increasing its value. The number of drug labs in Helmand rose to roughly 50 from 30 the year before. The Western officials briefed on the report said countrywide production had increased from 2006 to 2007, but they did not know the final UN figure. They estimated a countrywide increase of 10 to 30 per cent. The sharp drop in poppy production in the north is likely to make this year's countrywide increase smaller than the growth in 2006. Afghanistan produced a record 6,100 tonnes of opium poppies last year, 92 per cent of the world's supply.

In Helmand the breadth of the trade is staggering. The sparsely populated desert province produces more narcotics than any country on earth, including Burma, Morocco and Colombia. Poppy prices that are 10 times higher than those for legal crops have so warped the local economy that some farmhands refused to take jobs harvesting legal crops this year. And farmers dismiss the threat of eradication, arguing that so many local officials are involved in the poppy trade that a significant clearing of crops will never be done.