Britain said Thursday it was dissatisfied with the Afghan government's efforts to eradicate drugs from the country, one of the world's largest opium producers.
The results of a campaign by President Hamid Karzai's administration to eradicate the poppies used to make opium "were not what we hoped for," British Foreign Office minister Bill Rammell told reporters in Kabul.
The Afghan government's efforts have been "patchy," said the minister, who is on a three-day visit to the war-torn country.
Britain is leading international efforts to eradicate Afghanistan's poppy crop, with the United Nations saying this year's harvest was expected to be the largest yet.
Rammell said some key figures engaged in the trade must be arrested and prosecuted, but did not give details.
Reacting to his remarks, Interior Minister Ali Ahmad Jalali said Afghanistan had "lots of problems" and needed to first build "capacity" to fight the illicit drug industry.
"Afghanistan has a very limited capacity to deal with this significant increased of poppy cultivation and also drug trafficking," he told AFP.
"Now it is the beginning of a major effort of eradication. One cannot expect that at the beginning of this new project we will be able to make a major impact. However we are moving in the right direction," Jalali said.
"We are trying, we are learning from past experiences and since we are building these units (anti-narcotic force) I think in the future we will do better," he said.
"We depend a lot on international help to respond to this challenge for this problem," Jalali said.
Rammell said, "drug money finances organised crime and extremist activities. The drugs trade threatens security and stability in Afghanistan and beyond."
Jalali for his part admitted that money flowing into the country through the drug trade was helping "terrorist activity" as well as regional warlords maintaining private armies.
"Drugs also fund the factional armies, terrorism, and organised crime," Jalali said.
Karzai last month called for a "jihad", or holy war, against the growing narcotics trade, saying it threatened the stability of the government.