BRUSSELS, July 3 (Reuters) - Belgium's zero-tolerance policing of Euro 2000 stamped out violence by thugs and hooligans bent only on destruction, the country's Interior Minister said on Monday.

'It was a terrible Waterloo and colossal defeat for the hooligan,' Antoine Duquesne told Reuters in an interview, referring to the battlefield defeat in Belgium of Napoleon Bonaparte's troops.

Belgian police made 1,300 arrests during the tournament, which it co-hosted with the Netherlands, and deported around 500 people, most of them English, following two days of violence in the Belgian capital and Charleroi.

Some fans have been outspoken critics of what they called heavy-handedness on the part of the Belgian police, including the use of teargas and watercannon.

But Duquesne said these tactics had the desired effect of reducing violence, and consequently he expected the country's total security bill for staging the three-week event to be less than the one billion Belgian francs ($23.53 million) first set aside.

'I think it will be less and compensated by revenues,' Duquesne said, adding the final accounts had not yet been drawn up.