Afghanistan’s heroin-producing poppies will not be sprayed with herbicide this year despite a record crop in 2006 and US pressure for President Hamid Karzai to allow the drug-fighting tactic.

Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai today condemned the use of gunfire by US troops to suppress Afghans angered by a traffic accident involving a military truck that sparked the worst riots in the capital since the fall of the Taliban.