BIRJAND, Khorasan Province -- A visiting member of Afghanistan's Loya Jirga (Assembly of Elders) Abdolkarim Zargar said here Saturday that the illicit drug production factories and laboratories have resumed operations in Afghanistan.

He told IRNA that following the resumption of poppy cultivation and rise in the opium output, the factories have also started operation.

He added that the higher the amount of poppy cultivation in a province, the more narcotics production factories and laboratories in the area.

The factories and laboratories operating in the Taleban era will become active again, he predicted.

He said the raw material for drug production is imported from Russia and Germany.

Meanwhile in statements echoing the Afghan official, Britain's Foreign Office Minister Mike O'brien has warned that eradicating the cultivation of poppies in Afghanistan will be a long-term process with production expected to rise again next year on top of a massive 18-fold increase in the past 12 months.

He refused to say that Britain's pounds 40 million ($62m) contribution to the eradication program had proved to be a 'catastrophic failure' because of the huge growth, insisting that the 17,300 hectares of the crop had been destroyed this year.

The best assessment was that the intervention had 'reduced the quantity of drugs on the market by about a quarter', O'brien told MPs in London on Tuesday.

He suggested the reason why there was a staggering increase in opium production in Afghanistan from 185 tons last year to a projected 2,700 tons in 2002 was due to extreme measures of the former Taleban regime before being overthrown.

"We are not pursuing the Taleban's policy of hanging anyone who grows poppies of opium -- a policy they pursued for one year only to drive up the price," the foreign office minister for the Middle East and South Asia said.

One of Britain's major concerns is that about 90 percent of the heroine sold on UK streets is imported from Afghanistan.