TRIESTE, Italy (Reuters) – Washington is to  dramatically overhaul its Afghan anti-drug strategy, phasing out  opium poppy eradication, the US envoy to Pakistan and  Afghanistan told allies yesterday.

Richard Holbrooke, attending a G8 conference on stabilising  Afghanistan, also discussed efforts to support its Aug 20  election. Washington has nearly doubled its troops to combat a  growing Taliban insurgency and provide security for the vote.

“The Western policies against the opium crop, the poppy  crop, have been a failure. They did not result in any damage to  the Taliban, but they put farmers out of work,” Holbrooke told  Reuters after a series of bilateral meetings in Italy.

“We are not going to support crop eradication. We’re going  to phase it out,” he said. The emphasis would instead be on  intercepting drugs and chemicals used to make them, and going  after drug lords.

He said some crop eradication may still be allowed, but only  in limited areas.
Afghanistan supplies more than 90 per cent of the world’s  heroin.

Despite the millions of dollars spent on counter-narcotics  efforts, drug production kept rising dramatically until last  year – UN figures indicate Afghanistan’s opiate output has  risen more than 40-fold since the 2001 US-led invasion.

Italian Foreign Minister Franco Frattini said Holbrooke told  delegates the United States planned to cut back funding for  eradication while allocating several hundred million dollars to  support legal crop cultivation.