Afghans warned they face bleak future unless illegal heroin trade is curbed

Afghanistan faces a "bleak" future if the world does not act to stem the trade in heroin, a Foreign Office minister warned yesterday.

Bill Rammell, the minister responsible for Britain's role in the campaign against the drugs trade, called on the international community to do more to help end opium production in the war-torn country, which is responsible for 95 per cent of the heroin reaching the streets of Britain.

Speaking at the start of an international conference in Kabul aimed at raising the profile of the war against the Afghan narcotics trade, Mr Rammell said he wanted to "galvanise" the international community into taking action.

Mr Rammell said: "If we do not seize it, and that means in the next year to 18 months, the longer-term consequences for the flow of drugs and the future of Afghanistan will be bleak." He added: "If we do not tackle drugs we are not going to get a secure and sustainable future for Afghanistan."

The United Nations warned last year that opium production was spreading like a cancer in Afghanistan, with the country producing three quarters of the world's illicit opium, from which heroin is made. The UN estimates that two thirds of all opiate users take drugs of Afghan origin.

Afghanistan has re-established itself as the world's biggest opium producer after the fall of the Taliban regime, which banned poppy cultivation.

Drug agencies in Britain and other western European countries are alarmed at the quantities of heroin from Afghanistan. The conference of 100 international experts and 50 specialists of drugs from Afghanistan is thought to be the first time such a high-level meeting has been held to tackle the drugs trade in the country.

Mr Rammell, who is co-hosting the meeting with Hamid Karzai, the President of Afghanistan, said Britain, Germany and the United States were already working on a string of measures to improve policing, beat drug trafficking and destroy crops. But he said he was looking for "concrete outcomes" from the meeting, including promises of personnel and other support.

The Department for International Development is also spearheading programmes to introduce alternative sources of income for poppy farmers.

Initiatives include a programme by Customs and Excise to set up mobile detection units to trap heroin shipments into Kabul and efforts to encourage the Afghan army to play a greater role in destroying crops. DFID has also allocated £20m to schemes to encourage the growth of kitchen gardening and poultry farming to replace poppy fields.

The Foreign Office fears that there is a risk of Afghanistan becoming entrenched as a drugs economy. Mr Rammell warned that if efforts to cut poppy production were not successful "we will continue to see the flows of drugs to the UK and to other countries. Increasingly it will have an impact on Afghanistan itself in that people are beginning to take heroin and on a wide-scale basis."

He said the drugs trade was linked to security in Afghanistan and helped to bankroll terrorist groups. But he insisted: "Ninety-five per cent of the heroin on British streets is from Afghanistan so it really is one area where foreign policy coincides with domestic policy."

Britain is charged with dealing with the opium poppy trade under the Bonn agreement, which was signed at the end of the war that ousted the Taliban from power.

The Government has set a target of eliminating poppy production within 10 years. Ministers insist they can still meet the target despite a survey by the United Nations in October which showed opium poppy cultivation increased from 74,000 hectares in 2002 to 80,000 hectares last year.

¿ At least 20 people were killed and 40 wounded in several clashes in the north-eastern Afghan province of Badakhshan at the weekend. The Pakistan-based Afghan Islamic Press said fighting broke out over a dispute between two commanders about who would receive a tax on the local poppy crop.