Afghanistan’s illicit opium production, nearly 90 percent of the world’s total, is likely to creep upward again next year after slipping in 2005, the United Nations said. First results from a survey showed that in many provinces “there will be an increase of poppy cultivation in 2006,” UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) representative Doris Buddenberg told a media briefing. This was despite a 21 percent drop in the area planted with opium poppies this year, the first drop since the extremist Taliban government was toppled in 2001, according to earlier UNODC figures. Full Story