WARNING ON RESURGENCE OF AFGHAN DRUG TRADE

The head of the United Nation's anti-drug programme, Antonio Maria Costa,
yesterday warned that a big international effort was needed to counter a
resurgence of the drugs trade in Afghanistan.

Mr Costa told the Financial Times that a twin strategy of interdiction and
crop-substitution had to be pursued more vigorously, with the support of
western countries, if Afghanistan was to be transformed into a stable and
economically viable state.

According to the UN Office for Drug Control and Crime Prevention, which Mr
Costa heads, up to six Afghan provinces are defying a ban on opium poppy
cultivation issued by Hamid Karzai, the Afghan president. Afghan heroin is
once again flooding the illegal international drugs market.

"Afghanistan remains an international problem ... the efforts of the
international community have yet to have an impact on provincial governors
and warlords who are part of the dynamics of opium cultivation," Mr Costa said.

He spoke as international divisions over what anti-drug policies were best
surfaced at a UN conference in Vienna.

The conference, hosted by the Commission on Narcotics Drugs, the central UN
policy-making body, has exposed the difficulties the international
community has encountered in reducing illicit drug production, trafficking
and abuse worldwide by 2008, a target set at a UN special session five
years ago.

According to a mid-term report presented by Mr Costa, "encouraging
developments are mixed with alarm signals, their relative emphasis
depending on the type of drug and on the region under consideration".

Production, trafficking, and illicit use of cocaine and heroin have, at
best, stabilised at high levels, with the consumption of synthetic drugs
and cannabis continuing to rise.

Mr Costa said the past five years had also seen a dangerous trend
developing from eastern Europe to the north Pacific: the spread of HIV/Aids
because of intravenous drug abuse.

Both Mr Costa and a majority of ministers - led by the US - attending the
conference have resisted calls from pro-liberalisation non-government
organisations to redraft UN conventions requiring member states to
criminalise a range of drugs.

"The NGOs calling for greater liberalisation are definitely a minority.
They do not represent many countries round the table," Mr Costa said after
NGOs set up a rival conference.

However, several European countries, including the UK, Belgium, Switzerland
and the Netherlands, have exploited loopholes in the UN conventions to
pursue more tolerant policies towards cannabis use, with a greater focus on
rehabilitation for hard drug users.

The former head of Interpol, Ray Kendall, yesterday urged the UN to examine
the lessons being learnt by these European governments and to adopt a more
forward-thinking approach to the drugs problem than the current focus on
law enforcement.

"We have been chasing the problem rather than catching up, still less
getting ahead of it," he said.