BRUSSELS, May 12 (AFP) - Afghan President Hamid Karzai said on Thursday that he hoped opium poppy production in his country would drop by around a quarter in 2005.

"There has been good progress this year. I hope there will be 20 to 30 percent reduction this year in the drug cultivation in Afghanistan," he said in Brussels after talks with European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso.

According to the United Nations, Afghanistan grew 87 percent of the world's supply of the opium used to make heroin last year.

The country saw a 64 percent rise in opium production in 2004 and has also branched into heroin refining over the last year, although provincial officials have made strides in eradicating poppy fields in recent months.

Karzai, who declared a "jihad" or a holy war on drugs shortly after being elected president in October last year, said that farmers had been cultivating opium poppies out of despair because they had no other options.

"What is required is now a long strategy in an effective parallel manner, the provision of alternative livelihoods, of agriculture so that the Afghan farmer can replace his poppy field, which came to him out of desperation, to another form of agriculture," he said.

Barroso welcomed the news of a likely drop and said the European Union has just approved the last tranche of one billion euros (1.3 billion dollars) it had pledged to help Afghanistan fight drug production.

"Today we have delivered on our pledge," he said.

"We are happy to see that in 2005 there will be a reduction," he told reporters. "But we agree that it is (for the) long term, there will not be quick fixes."

"We are committed to go on supporting rural development precisely as a way to face that challenge of narcotics in Afghanistan."

Karzai has been visiting Brussels to try to win long-term support for his conflict-torn country well beyond parliamentary elections scheduled for September 18.