YANGON, Nov. 1 (Xinhuanet) -- The opium cultivation in Myanmar dropped by 26 percent in 2005 from 2004 and 80 percent from the peak year of 1996, said a report of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) Tuesday.

    Quoting UNODC's 2005 Myanmar Opium Survey Report released here,Xavier Bouan, UNODC Regional Illicit Crop Monitoring expert, said at a press briefing that the country's opium cultivation area stood at 32,800 hectares in 2005, falling from 44,200 hectares in 2004, while the number of families involved in growing opium declined by 26 percent to 193,000.

    The survey report also estimated Myanmar's total potential opium production in 2005 at 312 tons, down 16 percent from 370 tons in 2004 and 82 percent from 1,760 tons in 1996.

    However, the report was concerned about existing poverty among farmers, pointing out that "some of the poorest people are being affected by the loss of income from drugs as cultivation declines".

    Warning that the world will not condone counter-narcotic measures that bring about humanitarian disaster, the report calledon the international community to fight drugs and poverty simultaneously, to eliminate both the causes and the affects of these twin afflictions.

    The report also stressed the need to have food security and income generation programs remained in place in Myanmar and be strengthened to support both the farmers' decision not to plant opium and enforcement measures to eradicate illicit opium growing.

    The Myanmar-UNODC joint opium survey, the fifth since 2001, was carried out under the UNODC illicit crop monitoring program. It was based on both the use of satellite images and ground verification focusing on Shan state where 94 percent of the country's opium poppy cultivation lies.

    The UNODC report maintained that Myanmar remains the second largest opium grower in the world after Afghanistan but its share of world opium poppy cultivation fell to 21 percent in 2005 from 23 percent in 2004, while its share of world opium production to 7percent.

    At the press briefing, joined by the Myanmar Central Committee for Drug Abuse Control (CCDAC), Police Chief Brigadier-General Khin Yi agreed with the report that poppy-growing farmers are seriously in need of assistance and support to sustain the decision to stop the poppy cultivation, emphasizing the need for introduction of food security and income generating alternative development programs as well as a ready market for the substituted crops produced to prevent the farmers from reverting back to poppy cultivation.

    Khin Yi, who is also CCDAC secretary, expressed Myanmar's commitment to maintaining the present momentum by relying on its own resources in the launching of a 15-year plan (1999-2014) on totally eradicating drugs in the country.

    He held that that if international assistance is forthcoming, the country could achieve a status of opium-free nation in a much shorter period. Enditem