By Mark John

BRUSSELS, Nov 28 (Reuters) - The United States has shelved a push for next year's Afghan poppy crop to be sprayed with herbicide from the air after opposition from President Hamid Karzai's government, a senior U.S official said on Wednesday.

"We've talked to President Karzai about the programme we want to work with him on this season," Thomas Schweich, the U.S. coordinator on counter-narcotics in Afghanistan, told Reuters.

"He has said he doesn't want to do aerial eradication so we won't do aerial eradication. If he changes his mind, we will," Schweich said in an interview during a trip to Brussels.

Aerial spraying, used by the United States to fight cocaine production in Latin America, is highly contentious.

It is championed by counter-narcotics officials in the White House and State Department as the most effective way to destroy poppies in Taliban-controlled areas.

But it has run into broad resistance from Afghan officials, the U.S. Congress and Defense Department, while European allies fear it could backfire on efforts to win over the Afghan people, according to officials involved in the discussions.

The Afghan government has also cited health concerns for local residents. The United States argues that the herbicide involved, glyphosate, is safe and widely used by U.S. farmers.

Assuming no change of policy from Karzai, Schweich said the United States would concentrate on less controversial ground eradication techniques, including a programme managed with local governors which has seen only patchy results so far.

"That programme is going to continue. It got about 15-16,000 hectares last year. We didn't think it was enough so we are going to monitor very closely whether it is down equitably," he said of suspicions that powerful players in the opium trade use their influence to ensure their fields are not targeted.

The U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) said this month Afghanistan accounts for 93 percent of world opium production and is the biggest narcotics producer since 19th century China.

POPPY-FREE

Profits from opium fuel the Taliban insurgency and the growth in the trade has highlighted the failure of Afghan and British-led international efforts to tackle the problem.

Schweich said ground eradication operations would need to be better guarded from attack but stressed protection should come from Afghan security forces rather than NATO's 40,000-strong peace force, which already complains of being under-resourced.

"It will require NATO coordination and intelligence-sharing ... But we don't anticipate seeing NATO troops acting as eradicators," he said.

Critics say air spraying would give the Taliban a powerful propaganda tool among villagers devastated by a Soviet campaign that destroyed food crops with aerial defoliant.

Yet Schweich rejected as untrue the perception that spraying would mostly hit impoverished farmers who would then be deprived of their income, saying most opium production was concentrated in the less poor but more violent south of Afghanistan.

"There are 13 poppy-free provinces in Afghanistan and there is a good chance it will be 18 by the end of the season -- which means more than half the country both geographically and in terms of provinces will be poppy-free," he said.

Schweich said the United States was also stepping up support for efforts to crack down on ringleaders of the drugs trade, including senior Afghan officials suspected of involvement but against whom firm evidence was difficult to collect. (Editing by Charles Dick)

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