Source: Sunday Times (UK) Contact: Sun, 28 Jun 1998 Author: Nicholas Rufford Tashkent BRITAIN FUNDS BIOLOGICAL WAR AGAINST HEROIN BRITAIN is engaged in a secret attempt to crush the worldwide heroin trade with biological warfare. The project involves spies, scientists and former Soviet germ warfare experts. At a secure research laboratory in Uzbekistan, central Asia, the scientists are developing a virulent strain of a fungus that destroys opium poppies, the raw material for heroin. They have drawn up plans for manufacturing enough fungus to infect thousands of acres of poppies in the Golden Crescent of central Asia, the source of 90% of Britain's heroin. Bumper harvests there have recently flooded Britain and western Europe with cheap heroin. The street price has halved and port and airport seizures have increased sharply. The fungus may also be used in the Golden Triangle opium-growing regions of southeast Asia and in South America, the sources of most of the heroin sold in the United States. Senior officials in the British and American governments, which are sharing the cost, believe the project will give them a vital advantage in the war against heroin. A British expert, who has worked with the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food, is supervising the research and has prepared a report after visiting the laboratory this month. Intelligence services on both sides of the Atlantic have been involved from the planning stage and may have a role in the deployment of the fungus, which could be ready to use next year. Although the fungus can kill opium plants, a more subtle strategy has been developed to frustrate growers. If the fungus is spread in low doses, the plants develop but with little opium inside. The growers will therefore expend money and effort cultivating a useless crop. The work is being carried out at Uzbekistan's state genetics institute, which manufactured germ agents for destroying the food crops of the Soviet Union's enemies during the cold war. The Foreign Office and the American State Department have contributed $500,000. They will also supply specialist equipment to the laboratory and train its scientists in mass production of the fungus. About 30 researchers, some veterans of secret Soviet biological weapons programmes, have been employed to refine virulent new strains and to test them on locally grown opium. Rustam Makhmudovich, the institute's deputy director, confirmed that the fungus had already been used in trials to destroy poppy fields in Uzbekistan's mountainous eastern region. More work is needed to satisfy the British and the Americans that the fungus is safe. No harmful side effects have been found and the strain attacks only opium poppies. The advantage of the fungus over chemical herbicides is that it reproduces and spreads of its own accord, leaving other plant and animal life unaffected. A confidential report states: "Experiments in both controlled environments and the field showed conclusively the fungus was able to kill the opium poppy in relatively low doses." The fungus can be sprayed by aircraft onto poppy fields. Once infected, healthy poppies quickly develop lesions that eventually cover the whole plant. The infection spreads through the crop by the release of millions of airborne spores from the dying poppies. Some United Nations officials, however, fear the West could be accused of waging germ warfare and that fundamentalist Islamic regimes in Afghanistan and Iran could exploit the issue to win support from more moderate Islamic countries. Senior staff in the UN's drug control programme (UNDCP) brokered the deal with the Uzbekistan government last year and are handling the project to avoid accusations of western political interference. Field staff and consultants have received instructions from the UNDCP's headquarters in Vienna not to discuss the work. - --- Checked-by: (Joel W. Johnson)