Taleban deny 'heroin baron' link

Taleban deny they had any links with alleged drug baron Mr Noorzai

Afghanistan's former Taleban rulers have denied receiving support from an alleged drug baron arrested by the US.

A Taleban spokesman said there was "no question" that Bashir Noorzai had given "money or weapons to the Taleban".

The arrest of Mr Noorzai, described by President Bush as a top drug trafficker, was announced on Monday.

A US official said that Mr Noorzai had a "symbiotic relationship" with the Taleban and provided them with manpower, explosives and other weapons.

He faces charges of conspiring to import heroin worth $50m (£26m).

'Powerful man'

"His relations with the Taleban were just like those of other Afghans," the Taleban's political spokesman, Abdul Hayee Motmaeen, told the Afghan Islamic Press on Tuesday.

Noorzai and the Taleban had a symbiotic relationship - the Taleban permitted Noorzai's business to flourish US attorney David Kelly

He described Mr Noorzai as a "powerful man" who did not need to seek or lend support to the Taleban.

The accusations against the Taleban were aimed at "obscuring the involvement of others" in the drug trade, he said.

"The Taleban struggled a lot against narcotics and had banned poppy cultivation," he added.

The former ruling militia launched a widely acknowledged campaign to eradicate poppy cultivation from Afghanistan in the last year of its rule.

Drug production has flourished inside Afghanistan since the Taleban were ousted in 2001 by US-led forces.

Breakthrough

US prosecutors say Mr Noorzai was arrested on US territory.

They allege that since 1990, he has been at the centre of a multi-million dollar heroin operation which controls poppy fields, drug laboratories and a trafficking operation based in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

US attorney David Kelly said the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) had become aware that Mr Noorzai was planning to come to America and that it had "seized the opportunity and the individual".

The BBC's Jeremy Cooke in New York says the Americans clearly regard this as a major breakthrough in their war on illegal drugs.

Mr Noorzai faces a life sentence if convicted.

The US authorities also want at least $50m of Mr Noorzai's illicit profits, Mr Kelly said.