Brigitte Bardot slams Romania for dog cull

[Crossfire Bulldogs]

BUCHAREST (Reuters) - Former French film star turned animal rights activist Brigitte Bardot slammed Romania on Saturday for culling stray dogs after a Japanese man was bitten to death in Bucharest.

The capital's mayor Adriean Videanu announced immediately after the incident last Sunday that the time stray dogs could be kept in shelters before being put down would be shortened.

"When I think that the only way that has been found is to kill them, I tell you it's not nice what your government is doing," Bardot told Radio France Internationale Romania.

The 68-year-old Japanese businessman bled to death in central Bucharest after a stray dog bit him in the leg, severing a vital artery.

Foreign tourists often cite the packs of dogs roaming freely on the streets of Bucharest among the reasons they shy away from the capital of Romania, which plans to join the European Union as early as in 2007.

Dozens of people are bitten daily. Bucharest residents are split, some advocating culling and others feeding the stray dogs on the streets and building makeshift shelters for them.

The 100,000 stray dogs in the capital are considered a legacy of former communist dictator Nicolae Ceausescu's decision to demolish many houses in the 1980s. Dogs were abandoned by people rehoused in small flats.

In 2001, Bardot pledged to donate $150,000 to fund mass sterilization designed to save stray dogs from death, but former Bucharest mayor Traian Basescu, now president, abandoned the program after a month and ordered culling to continue.