SOFIA - A Bulgarian committee probing collaboration with the country's notorious communist secret services named Tuesday over 140 former and current lawmakers, including President Georgy Parvanov.
The committee charged with opening the Darzhavna Sigurnost's archives listed on its website the names of 141 MPs from all parliaments since the fall of the communist regime in 1989, including 19 deputies from the current parliament.
Parvanov, 50, was listed under the code name "Gotze." A former leader of the Bulgarian Socialist (ex-communist) Party, he is currently serving a second five-year term in office.
The committee had already released information about his links to the secret services in July, when it checked everyone working with the presidential administrations since 1989.
The current list concerns parliamentary deputies who are still alive. Parvanov was a lawmaker from 1995 to 2001.
Among the other names published was Ahmed Dogan, the leader of the Turkish minority Movement for Rights and Freedoms party, which is a major coalition partner in the current three-party centre-left government.
He worked as an agent for the military and foreign intelligence services from 1974 until 1988, the website showed.
Another leader of a small nationalist party, VMRO, Krasimir Karakachanov, was listed as a spy in the so-called unit for combating ideological diversion.
A former Bulgarian prime minister, Jean Videnov, was named for letting out his home for meetings of secret service agents.
The Socialist party candidate for mayor of Sofia in October's municipal elections, Brigo Asparuhov, was also listed.
The committee said he worked as a spy from 1970 until 1990 before becoming the intelligence services director from 1991 until 1997.
Under a law adopted last December, the names of all public figures who worked for the secret services before their dissolution in July 1991 must be published on the Internet.
There are no legal consequences of being named.
Since the adoption of the new law, the committee has also named six candidates running for election to the European Parliament, three former constitutional court judges, 15 Supreme Judicial Council judges and 23 members of the presidential administration.
ds/ar

09/04/2007 15:36 GMT