The United States is planning to supply helicopters to Afghanistan to help combat the world's largest opium industry, a senior Afghan official said Thursday. Deputy Interior Minister Lt. Gen. Mohammed Daoud said an official from the U.S. Defense Department discussed delivering eight helicopters to Afghanistan's fledgling counter narcotics police in a meeting in the Afghan capital on Wednesday. "Two of these aircraft should arrive in Kabul within a month. Six more are to come by the end of 2005," Daoud told The Associated Press in a telephone interview. Daoud said the helicopters would be used to transport Afghan counter narcotics police around the country for operations such as raids on drug laboratories.
