NEW YORK, May 22: The United States officials warned this month in an internal memo that an American-financed poppy eradication programme aimed at curtailing Afghanistan’s huge heroin trade had been ineffective, in part because President Hamid Karzai “has been unwilling to assert strong leadership”, says a report on Saturday.

A cable sent on May 13 from the United States Embassy in Kabul said that provincial officials and village elders had impeded destruction of significant poppy acreage and that top Afghan officials, including Mr Karzai, had done little to overcome that resistance the New York Times reported on Saturday.

The Times said that a copy of the three-page cable, which was addressed to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, was shown to newspaper correspondents by an American official alarmed at the slow pace of poppy eradication.

“Although President Karzai has been well aware of the difficulty in trying to implement an effective ground eradication program, he has been unwilling to assert strong leadership, even in his own province of Kandahar,” said the cable, which was drafted by embassy personnel involved in the anti-drug efforts, two American officials said.

The cable also faulted Britain, which has the top responsibility for counter narcotics assistance in Afghanistan, for being “substantially responsible” for the failure to eradicate more acreage. British personnel choose where the eradication teams work, but the cable said that those areas were often not the main growing areas and that the British had been unwilling to revise targets, the newspaper said.

WASHINGTON: Afghan President Hamid Karzai plans to ask US President George Bush on Monday for greater control over Afghan affairs including the detention of suspected insurgents, the fight against drug cultivation and the hunt for Osama bin Laden, AFP adds