Afghan leader asks for help to fight drug trafficking

Jack Straw was pressed yesterday for an urgent increase in international help to combat the exponential growth in drug trafficking since the defeat of the Taliban a year ago.

The Afghan President, Hamid Karzai, made the plea in talks with the Foreign Secretary during a 31-country conference in Bonn to review progress and problems in Afghanistan, exactly a year after a similar meeting set up the interim administration in Kabul.

After a ban on poppy production by the Taliban – assumed by the West to have been designed to increase the price – Afghanistan is once again in a position to supply 90 per cent of the heroin consumed in the European Union. Diplomats say, however, that production is still not up to levels before the ban was imposed.

Mr Karzai publicly appealed at the conference for an increase in the international effort to help extend security beyond Kabul to the west of the country. He admitted that his authority in Afghanistan was limited because many of the country's warlords did not respect his leadership.

His remarks came as fighting between rival warlords continued in western Afghanistan. On Sunday, an American B52 dropped seven 2,000lb satellite-guided bombs after US special forces came under rocket and mortar attack from unidentified Afghan forces near Shindand.

Amanullah Khan, the Pashtun leader, accused Ismail Khan, the Tajik governor of Herat, of launching a series of attacks on small villages near the American base. His forces say eight troops were injured yesterday and 11 were killed at the weekend.

Mr Straw announced at the conference that Britain was committing $15m (£10m) for salaries for the new Afghan National Army and a further $20m towards helping Afghanistan clear its international debt. Although $4.5bn in reconstruction aid has been committed so far by international donors, only $1.8bn has so far been spent. Mr Karzai urged Mr Straw to use his influence to speed the allocation of funds.

There has been mounting evidence of systematic human rights abuses, not least those identified in the Herat province by Human Rights Watch in a report last month. The organisation called for "immediate high-level consultations about expanding the International Security Action Force (Isaf) to other areas in Afghanistan outside Kabul".

Joschka Fischer, the German Foreign Minister, who convened yesterday's conference, said the reconstruction of Afghanistan was "of central importance for the international coalition against terrorism and its success".