Bulgaria's interior minister, Rumen Petkov, publicly accused three senior politicians of having ties to the country's Communist-era secret services, in a letter sent Wednesday to the Sofia television station bTV.
Petkov alleged that National Assembly Vice President Unal Lutvi had supplied information to both intelligence and counter-intelligence agencies, and that parliamentary Vice President Petar Beron had served in a unit responsible for overseeing the secret police. He further alleged that Krassimir Karakatchanov, leader of the opposition nationalist party VMRO, had cooperated with counter-intelligence.
The minister said the information came from ministry archives. The bTV campaign for full disclosure of Communist-era secret service files was triggered after two prominent television journalists faced similar accusations.
Petkov indicated that opening all archives was out of the question, saying current agents and collaborators would retain anonymity. Many files from that period were destroyed in January 1990, shortly after dictator Todor Jivkov was removed from power.
The government announced in early May 2006 a plan to gradually declassify more than 250,000 documents, with personal details redacted. A 1997 law had previously led to the release of 150 names of post-Communist ministers and lawmakers who had worked with the secret services.
Historical summary. TurkishPress restated this wire report, first published in May 2006, in its own words.