U.N. DRUG CHIEF, UNDER ATTACK, SAYS HE'S CAST AS THE OUTSIDER

UNITED NATIONS, Feb. 8 -- The head of the United Nations drug-control
and crime-prevention programs has come under attack from a former
senior aide and an assortment of diplomats who say he has mismanaged
his agency and is destroying its morale.

The official, Under Secretary General Pino Arlacchi, says he is not
surprised by the accusations because he has shaken up the Office of
Drug Control and Crime Prevention, which is based in Vienna. His case,
he said, is an example of what happens when an outsider challenges an
international bureaucracy.

A team of inspectors from the United Nations is in Vienna this week to
examine the administration of his office. Mr. Arlacchi, a sociologist
who played a leading role in the fight against the Sicilian Mafia a
decade ago and remains under a death threat in Italy, said he had also
made enemies abroad because of his drives against narcotics, human
trafficking and offshore banking.

"I have struck at very powerful and diversified interests all around
the world," Mr. Arlacchi said in interviews here this week. He said
his work against coca production in Bolivia, heroin trading on the
Tajikistan border with Afghanistan and opium-poppy growing in
Afghanistan, as well as new international anticrime measures adopted
late last year at a conference in Palermo, add up to "a slap in the
face of organized crime worldwide."

"All these things put together create a picture of something unusual,
particularly coming from the United Nations," he said. "Of course, you
pay a price for that."

In the organization, he said, another set of problems arose from
"changing the traditional bureaucratic culture." He said he had told
Secretary General Kofi Annan, who appointed him in 1997, that he had
no intention of being just another bureaucrat. Mr. Arlacchi's first
term is to end early next year. Until the crisis over his management
erupted, he had been widely expected to receive a second term easily,
and there are no signs now that he will not.

Mr. Arlacchi's critics say that rather than just shaking up an agency,
he has forced into "exile" some of its best officers, leading a few to
quit. He has been accused of never consulting his professional staff,
but instead surrounding himself with a secretive group of loyalists.

His critics also say he has made too many unrealistic promises to
nations around the world about programs to combat the drug trade and
other international crimes. But critics acknowledge that unfulfilled
pledges are often a result of governments' unwillingness to give him
adequate money to do the work.

A long-simmering campaign against Mr. Arlacchi's leadership recently
took more serious shape in a lengthy letter sent to him by Michael v.
d. Schulenburg, who until late last year was director of the agency's
division for operations and analysis.

In Italy, opponents of Mr. Arlacchi, a leftist former Italian senator,
have joined a campaign to have him removed. The Italian Radical Party
posted Mr. Schulenburg's letter on its Web site, www.radicalparty.org.
Supporters of Mr. Arlacchi say the party, which supports legalizing
narcotics, has long been a critic.

In his letter, Mr. Schulenburg, a German, said he joined the drug
agency 20 months ago with enthusiasm. "Today," he wrote, "I see an
organization that has increased its international visibility while at
the same time is crumbling under the weight of promises that it is
unable to meet under a management style that has demoralized,
intimidated and paralyzed its staff."