Xinhua

The United Nations Office for Drug Control and Crime Prevention launched a new project Friday to strengthen the ability of southeast European countries to fight drug trafficking and organized crime.

The project, partly funded by the British government, involves the collection and analysis of criminal intelligence by Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, Macedonia, Romania and Slovenia.

The new initiative comes in response to a growing heroin trade and higher levels of drug abuse among younger addicts in southeast Europe, according to the U.N. drug agency, which has been working for the past three years with several governments in the region to cope with the problem. During that period, their coordinated activities contributed to the seizure of 1,127 kilograms of hard drugs.

The new 2.2 million-U.S. dollar project is expected to enhance the capacity of these countries to identify traffickers and disrupt their networks.