President Bush yesterday urged Afghan President Hamid Karzai to eliminate his country's heroin trade, while Mr. Karzai said he was "sad" that U.S. troops had abused Afghan prisoners.

Despite these points of friction, the two leaders signed an agreement to increase cooperation on security, political and economic issues. The agreement, among other things, called for ending production of poppies in Afghanistan, the world's leading producer of the raw material that is refined into heroin for the streets of the United States.

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President Bush yesterday vowed to cut illegal drug use in America by 25 percent within five years and equated drug use with aiding terrorists, since many are funded through the drug trade.

"If you're buying illegal drugs in America, it is likely that money is going to end up in the hands of terrorist organizations," Mr. Bush said in the East Room, where he was joined by drug policy director John Walters. "Just think about the Taliban in Afghanistan.

"Seventy percent of the world's opium trade came from Afghanistan, resulting in significant income to the Taliban, significant amount of money to the people that were harboring and feeding and hiding those who attacked and killed thousands of innocent Americans on September the 11th," Mr. Bush said. "When we fight drugs, we fight the war on terror."

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The White House yesterday criticized the United Nations for voting the United States off the U.N.'s international drug monitoring agency and human rights commission, but said it would not support a move in Congress to withhold U.N. dues.

"The president believes that we should pay the dues that we owe to the United Nations, but the president is also concerned about the signal the United Nations, through these two entities, is sending to the world about the seriousness with which these entities will carry out their mission in fighting for human rights or fighting against drugs," President Bush's spokesman, Ari Fleischer, said.

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