AFP - About 2,000 Bulgarian police and other state employees rallied Saturday in Sofia against government plans to cut their salaries in a bid to balance the country's budget.

Police, firemen, prison guards, army and tax administration employees joined in the peaceful protest despite legislation banning them from striking.

They all wore civilian clothes and carried no guns.

The protestors urged the government to drop plans to make all 150,000 state employees, including police and the army, pay their social security contributions out of their own pockets, which would effectively cut their salaries by 12.1 percent.

The government currently pays all social security contributions for civil servants, who are in turn banned from striking and taking second jobs.

Police, who were most numerous, also demanded better working conditions and a long-delayed administrative reform of the law enforcement sector.

Many said they had been forced to pay for fuel and even stationery from their own pockets and carried slogans "Public security requires decent pay!"

"We get our privileges as compensation for giving up basic human rights. Policemen, firefighters risk their own lives daily to guarantee the lives of others," police union chief Valentin Popov said.

All the demonstrators knelt down to observe a minute of silence for colleagues who lost their lives while on the job.

They also booed Interior Minister Tsvetan Tsvetanov, who attempted to join the rally.

"Let us be realists. There should be some understanding that the government today cannot offer more money to its employees," Tsvetanov told journalists on the sidelines.

The Bulgarian government is desperately seeking to boost its revenues and cut spending in order to avoid entering a big budget deficit.

But all its attempts to conduct reforms of major sectors like law-enforcement, healthcare and the pension system and cut privileges for some social groups have so far caved in to public pressure.