The United States admits that its efforts in eradicating opium poppy production in Afghanistan have proven to be of no avail.

Washington's special envoy to Pakistan and Afghanistan, Richard Holbrooke said on Sunday that the current measures taken against poppy growers had been "a failure".

"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 said at a G8 meeting in Italy.

Holbrooke suggested that the US-led forces should go after the drug lords across Afghanistan which had proved a tough job in the past. He further said that Washington's new strategy will focus on intercepting chemicals used to refine opium into heroin.

Afghanistan's opiate output has risen more than 40-fold since the 2001 US-led invasion, according to UN figures.

This is while a new wave of US troops has arrived in Helmand, an opium-growing southern province where the foreign troops in Afghanistan have lost several grounds to the Taliban in recent months.

Britain looks set to keep the same policy despite a change in the US policy toward poppy eradication.

In Helmand, more than 8,000 British troops are facing a bloody campaign launched by the militants. The province produces much of the heroin that funds the Taliban.

The conflict-torn country supplies more than 90 percent of the world's heroin.

JR/SME/MMN