EU AID TO HELP SMASH AFGHAN HEROIN SUPPLY, SAYS PATTEN

EU aid could cut a heroin trail supplying European capitals including
Dublin, it was disclosed yesterday.

A massive flow of cash was designed to re-build the shattered economy of
Afghanistan, the Forum on Europe was told.

EU External Relations Commissioner, Chris Patten, said that one aim was to
provide alternative employment so that farmers would not spend their energy
and effort growing the poppy that produced the heroin.

Afghanistan produced 80/90pc of the heroin reaching European capitals and
he would be surprised if Dublin was an exception, he said at a Forum
session in Dublin Castle.

Mr Patten was explaining in what he called a "lively" debate the scale and
depth of the EU Common Security and Foreign Policy (CSFP).

He warned that another No vote here on the Treaty of Nice would block the
"most important moral cause" of the 15-member block.

If Ireland again rejected the treaty on enlargement of the 15-member bloc,
the EU would have to tell 10 countries waiting to join that the process was
stalled.

He rejected any concept that he was a bullying Brit. As a democrat who had
lost almost as many elections as he had won, he was giving his opinion.

Dismissing alarms about a European army, he explained that the CSFP was
more than a single policy. It was 15 countries trying to work together in a
range of humanitarian and peace-keeping operations and in seeking to
re-build failed states.

Contributing Euro600m this year, the EU was by far the biggest contributor
to the effort to re-build Afghanistan. The 15-member countries had
committed Euro2bn over the duration of the re-building, 45pc of the cash
from all the donor countries.

EU cash was not only helping to re-develop Afghanistan, it was also helping
it open up markets for its produce.

Pointing out that EU countries had peace-keeping forces in places as far
apart as the Balkans, Africa and Afghanistan, Mr Patten said that it was
the EU that provided 85pc of all the international peace-keepers.

A former Minister in the Northern Ireland Office (NIO) and author of the
report on development of the Police Service of Northern Ireland, Mr Patten
rejected the view of Joe Higgins, Socialist Party, that golbalisation was a
modern colonisation.

Globalisation was opening up markets and had made many people better off
because of improvements in living standards, said Mr Patten.

People had been left behind by the process, but investment in third world
countries had gone up and aid flows had dropped catastrophically, Mr Patten
said.