Karzai blasts west over opium policy

Hamid Karzai, the Afghan president, on Wednesday launch­ed a powerful attack on the international community’s failure to come up with a coherent counter-narcotics strategy for his country, blaming the west for Afghanistan’s explosion in opium poppy cultivation. --- The president told journalists in Kabul that part of the problem facing Afghanistan was that the international community had not respected the Kabul government’s proposals to reduce poppy production.