Nov. 23 (Bloomberg) -- Afghanistan needs ``sustained support and assistance'' from the international community to ensure the Taliban insurgency and increasing drug production don't derail its path to democracy, a United Nations envoy said.

Without such support, there is no guarantee that Afghanistan ``will not slide back into conflict and a failed state again,'' Japanese Ambassador Kenzo Oshima told the Security Council yesterday after visiting the south Asian country this month.

Attacks by the Taliban, that have doubled this year, and opium poppy cultivation rising 58 percent last year, are threatening a ``still too weak, fragile state and provincial institutions,'' Oshima said, according to the UN's Web site.

NATO leads a 31,000-strong force supporting the Afghan government's efforts to expand its control across the country and combating Taliban fighters mainly in southern and eastern provinces. Afghanistan, a country of 31 million people, has created democratic institutions since the ousting of the Taliban in 2001, inaugurating its first parliament since 1969 in December after holding elections in September 2005. Hamid Karzai, who took over after the fall of the Taliban, won the first direct presidential election in October 2004.

``It is abundantly clear that Afghanistan needs additional and sustained support and assistance from the international community, both for quick gains and for sustained progress,'' Oshima said. A report by his 10-member team, which spent five days in Afghanistan and also visited neighboring Pakistan, will be given to UN members early next month, the UN said.

National Army

Afghanistan's government plans double the size of the National Army to 70,000 soldiers over the next two years, Defense Minister Abdul Rahim Wardak said in Washington two days ago.

The North Atlantic Treaty Organization's contingent, known as the International Security Assistance Force, is drawn from 37 nations and includes 11,250 U.S. soldiers. The U.S. has another 10,000 military personnel in Afghanistan under separate American command on counter-terrorism operations.

The credibility of the alliance is at stake in Afghanistan and member countries should relax restrictions on how their soldiers operate there, U.K. Prime Minister Tony Blair told Parliament yesterday. The U.K. has 5,800 soldiers in Afghanistan.

British military leaders and lawmakers have appealed to troop contributors such as Germany to ease limits, or ``caveats,'' placed on the movement and use of their troops. ``We do raise the issue of the caveats the entire time, but several countries for reasons to do with their own politics are reluctant to remove them,'' Blair said.

German Mission

The mission of the 2,900-strong German contingent won't be altered and soldiers won't be transferred from northern Afghanistan, German Chancellor Angela Merkel told the lower house of parliament in Berlin yesterday.

President George W. Bush will press for such caveats to be removed when he attends the Nov. 28-29 NATO summit in Riga, Latvia, Nicholas Burns, the U.S. State Department's political- affairs chief, said two days ago in Washington.

The ability of NATO commanders in Afghanistan to make emergency decisions is being limited because some NATO members have said their forces can be moved around Afghanistan only with the approval of their governments, Burns said.

The Taliban-led insurgency is being boosted by funds from drug cartels in Afghanistan, U.S. Marine General James Jones, NATO's commander, said last month.

About 92 percent of the world's opium is produced in Afghanistan, where it generates more than $3 billion a year for people involved in its cultivation and trafficking. The number of people working in the Afghan opium industry rose to 2.9 million from 2 million in 2005, the United Nations said in September.

Afghanistan's governments will provide $500,000 for development projects in six provinces that are opium-free, the UN said on its Web site.

``By rewarding the good behavior of farmers who are committed to make their provinces opium-free, we show the people of Afghanistan that they can have a sustainable future without growing illicit crops,'' Antonio Maria Costa, executive director of the UN Office on Drugs and Crime, said yesterday in a statement. ``Solving Afghanistan's opium problem is not only a question of security, it's a question of development.''

To contact the reporter on this story: Paul Tighe at ptighe@bloomberg.net.

Last Updated: November 22, 2006 20:00 EST