Opium farmers in Afghanistan are on track to harvest even more poppies in 2007, eclipsing last year's record crop and deepening the UN's fears that drug money flowing to Taliban insurgents will be beyond control.

'This has created quite a cancer of insurgency … that has to be cut through in the years to come.'—Antonio Maria Costa, executive director of UNODC

The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime warned in a report Monday that the growing poppy harvest presents a direct danger to NATO forces in Afghanistan.

It is the drug money from these opium fields that feeds the insurgency and puts new weapons into the hands of Taliban fighters, the UN argues.

While the UN report notes that cultivation is expected to drop in central and northern Afghanistan, the drug trade continues to flourish in the south, including Helmand province — the world's largest poppy-growing region.

Last year's opium output was the largest on record, but the report expects that to be shattered by an increase in poppy production in 15 provinces.

"It's clear that the insurgents are deriving an income, which they use to pay salaries for their foot soldiers [and] to buy weapons," UNODC executive director Antonio Maria Costa said. "All of this has created quite a cancer of insurgency and illicit drug cultivation that has to be cut through in the years to come."

Warlords offer protection

Afghan President Hamid Karzai has vowed to rid his country of opium and poppy eradication programs are underway in parts of Afghanistan that have a government presence.

In southern regions, though, there are security problems and farmers grow the crop with impunity under protection by warlords.

International donors have directed hundreds of millions of dollars in development aid to make it profitable for farmers to grow wheat, or plant orchards, but Costa said the system has not worked well enough.

"We need to change the risk-reward balance for farmers," he said.

Poppies earn an estimated $2,000 US an acre, about 10 times the income from legal crops, while Afghan drug production makes up more than 90 per cent of the world's supply of heroin.

With files from the Associated Press