ANTI-DRUGS CHIEF WANTED TO BUY ALL TALIBAN'S OPIUM

A plan to buy up and destroy all the heroin produced by Afghanistan to stop
it reaching Britain was floated by Keith Hellawell, the Government's drugs
tsar.

Details of the plan were disclosed to The Telegraph as Mr Hellawell faced
what he said was a new whispering campaign on the day he was called before
three departmental ministers over their concern that Whitehall's drug
policy was ill-coordinated.

Mr Hellawell raised the idea at the end of last year, as one of a number of
suggestions to block the supply of heroin into Britain. However, it was
vetoed by the Foreign Office before it was even suggested to Mo Mowlam, the
Cabinet minister who is in charge of the Government's anti-drugs campaign.

He is understood to have mentioned the idea as a "line of inquiry" after he
returned from a fact-finding visit to Turkey towards the end of last year.

Whitehall sources said the proposal was for Britain to persuade the United
Nations to use its drug control programme to purchase Afghanistan's crop of
the drug. Most of the heroin in Britain originates in Afghanistan.

UN officials believe that because most of the opium production is
controlled by the ruling Taliban, they could negotiate directly with them
to purchase and destroy the bulk of the country's crop.

Drug production is now said to account for a huge percentage of
Afghanistan's income. The plan would have cost Britain tens of millions of
pounds, but the Foreign Office rejected it as a "non-starter".

It argued that it would condone drug-production and that the Taliban would
hold the UN to ransom by raising the price of the drug each year. One
Foreign Office source said: "We were rather surprised. It was a non-starter
from the first."

Mr Hellawell, a former chief constable who earns UKP106,000 a year, has faced
continued criticism about his performance as head of the Government's
anti-drugs strategy.

Last Sunday, he responded to his anonymous ministerial critics by saying:
"What I have been asked to do, I am doing. Every target that I have been
set is being met. Everything that was expected and anticipated of me is
going ahead on time."

He spoke of his frustration that while his strategies were winning plaudits
elsewhere in the world he had been subjected to "sniping" at home. "The
problem with this is that people are not prepared to stand up and name
themselves, they don't confront me, and off-the-cuff remarks don't help me,
and certainly do not help Government policy."

Yesterday, he added: "The Prime Minister is very pleased with my work."

Whitehall sources said that Mr Hellawell was asked to meet three Treasury,
Home Office and Foreign Office ministers yesterday to discuss ways in which
the co-ordination of the Government's anti-drugs strategy could be
improved.

He met Charles Clarke, the Home Office minister, John Battle from the
Foreign Office, and Dawn Primarolo, the Paymaster General, who has
responsibility for the Customs and Excise department.

One source said: "The problem is that he has different responsibilities to
each department and often they don't overlap and we don't know what each
other is doing."