BISSAU, June 29 (Reuters) - The former prime minister of Guinea-Bissau said a huge cocaine haul which mysteriously disappeared from police custody several months ago had been burnt on his orders.

The seizure in September of the cocaine with an estimated street value of $25 million was the biggest ever drugs bust in the West African country, increasingly used by South American cartels as a staging post into Europe.

It generated a scandal less than a month later when a judge freed the two main suspects and the 674 kg (1,486 lb) of cocaine went missing from a state treasury vault. Even senior ministers were at a loss to explain the disappearance of the drugs.

Former Prime Minister Aristides Gomes said the disappearance of the cocaine had been used by opposition parties to discredit his government, which was toppled by a no-confidence vote in parliament in March amid allegations he was complicit in drug trafficking.

"Under pressure from me and my direct order the 674 kg of cocaine were burned in my absence," Gomes, a close ally of President Joao Bernardo Vieira, told a news conference late on Thursday.

"Anyone who doubts that can take the affair to the courts."

In the wake of the drug's disappearance, Vieira dismissed the police chief leading the fight against drug cartels and created a commission to probe high-level government involvement in trafficking.

"There was no crime committed in this affair and it is not normal for members of my government to be questioned by an inappropriate police institution," Gomes said.

"Drug trafficking is essentially carried out by foreigners who take advantage of our porous borders."

Impoverished Guinea-Bissau, whose economy relies on the export of peanuts, has been devastated by coups and uprisings since independence from Portugal in 1974.

U.N. officials fear its penniless government could fall easy victim to wealthy South American cartels using it as a staging post to Europe unless the international community comes to its aid.

AlertNet news is provided by