The Greek authorities have announced officially that four Bulgarian citizens - two men and two women - have been arrested on their territory, Foreign Ministry spokesman Dragovest Goranov said on Monday.

The individuals have been identified. The four are charged with trafficking of arms and drugs. They came from Bulgaria, crossed the border at Promachon and were detained on Greek territory, Goranov specified. In his words, this logically means that they were followed and this is a matter of some channel of which the Greek authorities were aware - the Bulgarians were not detained at a customs check on the border.

The four are in a preliminary arrest facility and the Bulgarian Consulate General in Thessaloniki will contact them so that they may be provided with consular protection if they wish.

The charges are very severe and the Greek laws are very stringent, Goranov said.

The Associated Press was the first to report on Sunday that coast guard officers in the northern Greek city of Thessaloniki had arrested two Bulgarian citizens carrying guns and explosives they intended to sell to criminals or terrorists.

The AP quoted officials as saying that the Bulgarians offered to sell an undercover officer four pistols with silencers, an AK-47 automatic rifle, about 1.4 kilograms of TNT and 5.4 kilograms of ammonium nitrate, which is used as a fertilizer but also in improvised explosive devices. A small amount of cocaine was also found, the agency reported.

Source: BTA