ANTI-POPPY FUNGUS MAY HAVE BIOLOGICAL STING - BBC

LONDON, Oct 2 (Reuters) - Britain and the United States are
developing a fungus that attacks opium poppies, but the project aimed
at withering the heroin trade could end up producing a dangerous
biological weapon, the BBC reported on Monday.

Research on the pleospora fungus is being done at a former Soviet
biological warfare plant in Uzbekistan, with some samples already
ready to be sprayed on poppy fields, the BBC said in its investigative
programme Panorama.

The report, ``Britain's Secret War on Drugs,'' said critics raised the
spectre of eco-terrorism and feared that the cash-strapped institute
may deal with private parties if London and Washington did not provide
more funding.

A BBC reporter, who was shown the fungus at the Institute for Plant
Genetics in Tashkent, questioned whether it could be prevented from
mutating or spreading to other crops, a transcript of the report to be
aired on Monday evening showed.

``The fungus sounds like a silver bullet but it could easily become a
poisoned chalice,'' Paul Rogers, a British plant pathologist, told the
BBC.

``Once you develop a technology to spread plant diseases
intentionally, you are developing a technology which could easily be
misused by bad people against legitimate food crops.''

A spokesman for Britain's Foreign Office said research into the fungus
came under the auspices of the United Nations Drug Control Programme
(UNDCP) and was not a British project. He said he was not aware of any
request for extra funding.

``We contributed, in 1998/99, 100,000 pounds ($147,000) to the
development of the project, which may be able to attack the opium
poppy,'' he said.

``If there is any risk to human or animal health or the environment
then the project would be stopped. It (the fungus) will not be used
without the agreement of all countries concerned and pending safety
measures.''

Genetic modification has become a controversial issue in Britain,
where environmental activists have damaged test crops on several farms.

The BBC said trials by scientists at the plant in Tashkent had shown
the fungus to be an effective killer of a sample of Afghani opium poppies.

But it said confidential UNDCP documents showed ``private fears and
anxieties'' that the fungus ``may be difficult to contain,'' ``may
transform or mutate'' and may open the way for ``offensive biological
warfare targeting food crops.''