French Guiana's navy seized three tonnes of cocaine from a Venezuelan fishing boat in an anti-narcotics operation in Guianese international waters last Sunday, the territory's authorities said on Saturday. They said in a statement that French anti-drugs authorities had classified the boat as suspicious after aerial surveillance by the U.S. Coast Guard. "When the French ship approached it, the fishing boat threw into the sea 150 packages of cocaine each weighing about 20 kg, then tried to flee," the statement carried by dpa said. The naval ship then recovered the packages and caught up with the fleeing boat which they searched after authorisation from Venezuelan authorities. The fishing boat, its nine sailors and contraband were handed over on Friday to Venezuelan coastguards, near Trinidad. --SP 2050 Local Time 1750 GMT
