FREISING, Germany — The U.S. Central Command has pledged to help Afghanistan and its neighboring countries establish a counternarcotics center to fight the region’s poppy trade.

About 5,000 tons of opium were produced in Afghanistan in 2004, according to the U.S. Department of Justice. And while the southwest Asian drug trade had not formally been linked to terrorist activities, it was possible that drug traffickers and terrorists could join forces, said Lt. Gen. Lance L. Smith, the CENTCOM deputy commander.

“Disruption and dismantling of drug-trafficking organizations will prevent terrorists from gaining a foothold in what is a well-developed and mature way of generating large amounts of income,” Smith said last week at a conference outside Munich.

“[This income] could be used to buy influence, coerce partners and ultimately threaten stability and security if not confronted in a deliberate, systematic and organized manner.”

Smith said the Department of Defense had spent $70 million toward helping Afghanistan fight poppy production and trafficking. He said the DOD this year would work with adjacent countries to improve border security, cooperation between law enforcement agencies, training and equipment.

At last week’s Conference on Counter Narcotics and Regional Stabilization in Central and South Asian States, delegates agreed that fighting the drug problem would take better information-sharing, improved transportation and communication to cover the vast territory, and more consistent and unified border patrols.

For example, the chemicals used to process poppy into heroin have to be smuggled into Afghanistan.

“But without border controls, we cannot control their import and export,” said Randy Ockman, counternarcotics program manager of CENTCOM’s Joint Interagency Coordination Group.

Nations’ representatives are supposed to forward their ideas to CENTCOM by Aug. 1, including requests on where the center would be located and how it would be funded. A final proposal would be hammered out sometime in the fall or winter, then the nations would try to work in sync to stem the growth of poppy and trafficking of heroin, its opiate byproduct.

Since a U.S.-led coalition toppled the Taliban government in 1991, poppy production in Afghanistan has soared, according to the Justice Department. About 90 percent of the world’s heroin is derived from the country’s poppy crop.

In addition to Afghanistan, countries represented at the conference included Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Pakistan, Russia, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan, as well as Germany and the United Kingdom.

The conference was co-organized by CENTCOM and the George C. Marshall European Center for Security Studies, a U.S.-German military collaboration dedicated to security in the former Soviet states.