WASHINGTON, Oct. 27 (UPI) -- Afghanistan has become a narco-state funding the Taliban, President Clinton's former drug policy spokesman said Friday.
"Afghanistan has become a narco-state funding the Taliban, Bin Laden and Al-Qaeda yet we're passing the buck to Afghanistan, the British, and NATO," Robert Weiner, former spokesman for the White House National Drug Policy Office from 1995 to 2001, said in a statement.
"We need a 'Plan Afghanistan,'" Weiner said. "Afghanistan has just cultivated record opium crops and now supplies 92 percent of the world's heroin-producing opium according to the United Nations this month.
"Inaction against Afghanistan drugs is defeating our own purpose of stopping the funding source of the terrorism against us," he said.
Weiner called the Bush administration's failure to come up with a comprehensive plan to cut back Afghan drug crop growth "incomprehensible."
"As far back as Sept. 20, 2001, President Bush declared -- and he and the administration often repeat the claim -- 'We will starve terrorists of funding.' Apparently that has not been a priority against Terrorist Number One, Osama bin Laden," he said.
Weiner added, "We are saying, 'Anybody but us should tackle this issue. What happened to our own taking it head on? We've certainly waited for no one in Iraq."
He concludes, "Based on the U.S. response to date, apparently the drugs funding Bin-Laden aren't a big enough problem to warrant our focus."
