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Bardot upstaged by Romanian PM
02/03/2001 13:37 - (SA)
Bucharest - The Romanian prime minister adopted a puppy, on the eve of a cull of Bucharest's 300 000 stray dogs that has brought French activist Brigitte Bardot flying in to protest.
A day before the capital's mayor launches a clean-up that could lead to the extermination of its plague of mutts, Prime Minister Adrian Nastase said he was giving a home to a nine-month-old dog to offer an alternative to a plan that incenses animal lovers.
"I cannot just advise people what to do with stray dogs," Nastase told reporters after attending a meeting with his new pet Ralf, who was deloused and sterilised for the occasion.
"I should set an example too by taking responsibility," he said.
Film star turned animal rights activist Bardot was due in Bucharest to meet its mayor, Traian Basescu, in a bid to scupper his canine cull.
Basescu plans to unleash dogcatcher teams in the morning
to round up strays in an operation likely to take months. They
will be taken to city pounds, where their fate is uncertain.
If claimed, they will be sterilised and released. But if not, they are likely to be put down - a prospect which drew hundreds of people onto the capital's streets this month in protest.
Bardot, who plans to visit a pound and also hopes to meet
President Ion Iliescu on Friday, adopted two strays on a previous
visit to Bucharest two years ago.
She supports sterilisation schemes to cut a dog population which got out of control after thousands were turfed out of cramped flats when their owners were rehoused under during the regime of communist dictator Nicolae Ceausescu.
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