THE amount of heroin seized from smugglers on Bulgaria's borders last year was roughly equal to the amount confiscated in the countries along the main European drugs route over the past six years.

This information was released on Tuesday in a report by the Finance Ministry Customs Agency. The main drugs route originates in Turkey across Bulgaria to Albania, Romania, the Ukraine, Bosnia and Herzegovina and from there to the Czech Republic, Hungary, Austria, Germany, Holland and Great Britain.

There were 80 cases of drug smuggling registered throughout the year. Officers confiscated 2,619.7kg of drugs, 10,822 psychotropic pills and 3,094 litres of drugs precursors.

They also detained 119 drugs smugglers; 106 men, seven women, and six people whose gender was undetermined. According to the Customs Agency's report, that included 40 Turks, 17 Bulgarians, 16 Macedonians, 14 Albanians, five Poles, five Yugoslavians, four Bosnians, three Ukrainians, one Armenia, one Briton, one Georgian, one Lebanese, one Moldovan, one Nigerian, one Romanian, one Syrian, and one Dutch citizen.

Bulgarian customs officers prevented 45 attempts to smuggle 1,861kg of heroin, 12 attempts to smuggle 173kg of marijuana, seven attempts to smuggle 514kg of hashish and six attempts to smuggle 2.6kg of cocaine across the border. There were also other sporadic attempts to smuggle ecstasy pills.

The majority of drugs smuggling attempts were foiled at the Kapitan Andreevo checkpoint on the border with Greece where customs officers confiscated nearly 2,260kg of drugs, 2,293 litres of precursors and 6,680 pills.

A consignment of cocaine with a street value of DM 800,000 was seized at Sofia Airport on Monday from a Bulgarian arriving from Brazil.

A 200,000 euro sniffer dog training school initiative is to be set up at Balchik in northern Bulgaria on the Black Sea. The project was sponsored by the PHARE programme - the main channel for European Commission support for Central and Eastern European countries. Bulgaria will buy its sniffer dogs from neighbouring Balkan states.