Opium production fell for the first time in three years in Afghanistan , the UN reported today.

The UN's annual World Drug Report offered the rare piece of good news to the Government of Hamid Karzai.

It comes 24 hours after Nato's top commander in the country told The Times that British troops risked disturbing a "hornet's nest" by cracking down on the trade.

The total area devoted to the cultivation of poppies in Afghanistan fell by 21 per cent in 2005 according to the report, following successful anti-drug efforts by provincial governors in central Afghanistan.

But the reduction in area was nearly offset by growing conditions that improved the average yield of a poppy field by 22 per cent, meaning that the total drop in production was just 2.4 per cent.

The UN's Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) observed that any successes were threatened by the deteriorating security situation and the overwhelming financial rewards of poppy-growing.

With opium prices topping $200 per kg last year, a hectare of poppies was worth roughly ten times a hectare of wheat.

"Afghanistan's drug situation remains vulnerable to reversal because of mass poverty, lack of security and the fact that the authorities have inadequate control over its territory," said Antonio Maria Costa, the chief executive of the UNODC.

With reports of increased opium planting this spring, Mr Costa warned that any gains made last year could disappear.

The scale of the Afghan opium trade remains vast. The country produced a total of 4,100 tonnes of opium last year, 89 per cent of the world's total and nearly three times what it produced in 1990. Opium production accounts for 11 per cent of Afghanistan's GDP.

The EU, which has given hundreds of millions of euros to Afghanistan's anti-narcotics campaign, admitted its disappointment at the report.

"Unfortunately, we don’t see the big success we would like to see," said Benita Ferrero-Waldner, the EU's External Relations Commissioner, who bemoaned the Government's inability to control its country.

Yesterday, Lieutenant-General David Richards, who commands the International Security Assistance Force (Isaf) in Kabul, told The Times that about 35 per cent of the violence that has erupted in the south since British, Canadian and Dutch troops began patrolling had come from the "narco warriors" - the drugs barons.

"The poppy farmers will fight hard to protect their only means of livelihood, and without roads and irrigation systems [to help them grow different products], you can hardly blame them," General Richards said. Unless the farmers were given incentives to grow other crops, "we’ll be stirring up a hornet’s nest."

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