Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai has called for greater international help to eradicate the production of illegal drugs. In a statement, he said Afghanistan would never achieve stability and prosperity as long as its drugs mafia continued to survive. Mr Karzai's remarks came at the start of an international drugs control conference in the Afghan capital, Kabul, just as the poppy-growing season gets under way. He said his government would do all it could to combat drugs production, but the country's poverty- stricken farmers needed to be convinced of viable alternatives to poppy crops. The senior United Nations representative, Lakhdar Brahimi, told the conference poppy growing was 40 times more profitable than wheat, and previous efforts to divert farmers to other crops had faltered. (BBC)