KABUL - The US government would provide $268 million (12.8 billion afghanis) for law enforcement and combating the scourge drugs under an agreement signed in Kabul on Sunday. The accord was inked between Deputy Foreign Minister Javed Ludin and Hans G. Klemm, coordinating director of rule of law and law enforcement at the US embassy.

The funds would be used for strengthening police, the fight against drugs, improvement of the justice sector till 2012, Ludin told journalists after the signing ceremony.

Without going into details, he said the US government had been helping the Afghan government's campaign against drug trafficking and improvement of the justice sector since 2006.

Speaking on the occasion, Klemm identified ongoing insecurity and lack of law enforcement as big obstacles to the drive against drug trafficking and ending poppy cultivation.

Demand for drugs outside Afghanistan was also because of poppy cultivation and opium production in the country, he said, adding the US and its allies were struggling to stop poppy cultivation.

According to Abdul Qayyum Samir, a spokesman for the Ministry of Counternarcotics, 123,000 hectares of land have been cultivated with poppies this year and about 4,000 hectares have so far been eradicated.