Bulgaria Offers Air Base for U.S. Use in Drug Surveillance

Bulgaria has offered to provide a base for U.S.-operated unmanned surveillance aircraft to spot drug-running flights across a prime smuggling route between heroin-producing areas of Central Asia and Europe, Prime Minister Ivan Kostov said Wednesday.

Wrapping up an official visit to Washington, Kostov said in an interview that his government last year intercepted more than 2 tons of heroin--about one-fifth of the total seized worldwide. But he said he is asking for additional intelligence support from the United States to help Bulgaria do even more.

“We expect to open a base for unmanned surveillance aircraft in Bulgaria,” he said. “We want broader support and exchange of information” from the United States.

Earlier this month, the Pentagon began flying unmanned drones over Macedonia and southern Serbia to collect intelligence for the NATO-led force in Kosovo, a province of the main Yugoslav republic of Serbia. The international force is trying to dampen an upsurge of ethnic violence in Macedonia.

A Pentagon official said the primary purpose of the flights is to monitor the movement of guerrilla forces, but they also can provide intelligence about drug smuggling.

Kostov said his objective in inviting the United States to use Bulgaria as a base is to crack down on drug running. If the Pentagon agrees, the unmanned aircraft would serve a purpose similar to that of the CIA-operated surveillance plane that was involved in last week’s fatal accident in Peru. An American missionary and her daughter were killed when their civilian plane was shot down by the Peruvian air force on the mistaken assumption it was carrying illegal drugs.

According to the most recent State Department report on the international narcotics trade, Bulgaria is “an important transit route between Turkey and Western Europe for Southwest Asian heroin and Southeast Asian marijuana.” Although very little of the narcotics crossing Bulgaria reaches America, the report said, it “remains a country of concern to the United States.”

The department said drug seizures last year in Bulgaria “are comparable to those in the rest of Europe combined and represent a major increase over previous years.”

The report praised Kostov’s government for close and effective cooperation with U.S. and European law enforcement agencies. It said Bulgaria had made substantial strides toward curtailing government corruption.

Kostov said Bulgaria now has “the highest walls to the traffic of heroin” anywhere in Europe. Nevertheless, he said, experts on narcotics traffic in the country estimate that for every 2.2 pounds of drugs that are seized another 2.2 pounds still get through.

As a reward for its enhanced border control, Kostov said, Bulgarians can now travel to nearly all European Union countries without a visa.

“This is a major achievement for Bulgarian foreign policy,” he said.

Kostov said his talks with President Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney and Secretary of State Colin L. Powell addressed the overall situation in the Balkans and Bulgaria’s application to join the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.

He said he emphasized the importance of Washington’s continued engagement in the Balkans but pointed out that the United States does not have to solve all of the region’s problems. Last year, Bush indicated that he wanted to pull back from the Balkans, leaving the matter in the hands of the European Union. But he has not moved in that direction since taking office.