US envoy meets former Taliban commander

Source: AP

MUSA QALA, Afghanistan - The U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan flew to a town previously held by the Taliban in the heart of the world's largest poppy-growing region and told the ex-militant commander now in charge there that Afghans must stop "producing poison."

Ambassador William Wood on Sunday drank tea and talked with Mullah Abdul Salaam, a former Taliban commander who defected to the government last month and is now the district leader of Musa Qala in the southern province of Helmand.

Wood urged Salaam to tell his people to leave behind "the practice of producing poison," and said poppy production, the key element in the opium and heroin trade, was against the law and Islam.

"In Musa Qala the price of bread has risen dramatically. I won't say why — you know why," Wood said, alluding to farmers' practice of growing poppies instead of needed food.




Read more: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080114/ap_on_re_as/afghan_musa_qala

William Braucher Wood
Ambassador, Islamic Republic of Afghanistan
Term of Appointment: 04/16/2007 to present

Mullah Zaeef said that Mullah Omar would be allowed to live in Kandahar
under the protection of Naqibullah, a veteran of the war against the
Soviet invasion who, like many Afghans, uses only one name.