site.btaDefence Ministry Says It Continues to Implement Agreements Adopted at 2016 NATO Warsaw Summit for Increasing Security in Black Sea Area

Defence Ministry Says It Continues to Implement Agreements Adopted at 2016 NATO Warsaw Summit for Increasing Security in Black Sea Area

Sofia, February 21 (BTA) - The Bulgarian Defence Ministry continues to implement the agreements adopted at the NATO Warsaw Summit in July 2016 for increasing security in the Black Sea area, the Bulgarian Defence Ministry said Tuesday. It says its statement was prompted by "recent statements concerning the national defence policy and false insinuations about increasing NATO's military presence in the territorial waters of the Black Sea".

The Ministry recalls that on June 24, 2016, the government of the then prime minister Boyko Borissov adopted framework positions as a basis for a mandate for the Bulgarian delegation led by the then President Rosen Plevneliev at NATO's Summit in Warsaw on July 8 and 9, 2016. The framework positions envisage supporting NATO's measures intended to increase security in the Black Sea area by developing options and recommendations for tailored forward presence. The chief aim of this presence is increasing the interoperability and interaction of the NATO forces by developing a more intensive schedule of exercises that include land, air and naval components.

At the Warsaw Summit, where President Plevneliev participated along with the then Bulgarian ministers of defence and of foreign affairs, Nikolay Nenchev and Daniel Mitov, support was expressed for tailored forward presence of NATO and enhanced conduct of exercises in the Black Sea region with the purpose of conflict deterrence and avoidance. NATO's acts in the region are considered as fully defensive, proportionate and carried out in full transparency and according to the aims of the forward presence, the Ministry says.

At the Brussels Meeting of NATO's Defence Ministers on February 15 and 16, 2017, a decision was made to continue the process of increasing planned trainings, situational awareness and interoperability in the Black Sea region.

In 2016 a total of 22 exercises were conducted in the region, with the participation of land, air and naval components.

The caretaker cabinet of Ognian Gerdjikov continues to develop the principles of the Bulgarian defence policy as a reliable and predictable ally of NATO and in the spirit of the agreements adopted at NATO's Warsaw Summit in July 2016 for increasing security in the Black Sea region, the Defence Ministry says.

The Defence Ministry's statement comes a couple of days after former defence minister Nikolay Nenchev and the deputy head of the defence committee in the previous Parliament, Valentin Radev, called an extraordinary briefing and raised questions concerning Bulgaria's commitments to NATO. They asked what mandate caretaker Defence Minister Stefan Yanev had and what decisions he supported at the meeting of NATO Defence Ministers in Brussels on February 15 and 16. Nenchev and Radev said they were concerned that information about the meeting was missing. "What is happening in the Black Sea? What flotilla are we going to have there?" Radev asked. He voiced concern that "after the moves of the caretaker government Bulgaria may no longer be an island of stability". Radev also said he wants to know what the position of Bulgaria and of the caretaker Defence Minister is in respect of the forward presence in the southeastern flank, and what decision the caretaker cabinet had made about the joint air policing in this country.