site.bta Expert: Security System Needs Developed, Functioning Legal Framework

104 POLITICS - SECURITY - PROBLEMS - INTERVIEW

Expert: Security System Needs
Developed, Functioning
Legal Framework


Sofia, September 4 (BTA) - The security system should have a
developed and functioning legal framework - a structural and
functional law for the security system, as well as laws relevant
to the political and military intelligence, and the National
Bodyguard Service, security expert Yulii Georgiev said in an
interview with BTA. Georgiev is a member of the Board of the
National Security Association.

In his opinion, the security system and institutions should have
a single command centre. The problems remain, parliaments and
governments come and go, all with new concepts of security and
without a thought to continuity and consistency in the
development of the state. The results are there and the people
can sense it and experience it themselves all the time, Georgiev
pointed out.

To have the right and self-confidence to speak about the
security system at all it is necessary to have several
conditions but these, regrettably, remain non-existent to this
date, Georgiev said.

First, in addition to the functioning laws, there should also be
secondary legislation connecting and regulating the activity
and the interaction of the security institutions into one common
institutional and hierarchically ordered framework.

Second, in order to envision them as real, acting elements of
the system, it and the security institutions should have a
single command centre. Such does not exist. The present Security
Council with the Council of Ministers cannot fulfill this role
to the required capacity. Interior minister Tzvetlin Yovchev had
some good ideas and suggestions in this respect about an
intelligence board and an analytical and emergency centre at
state level, but these too, just as the draft bills we talked
about, remained stuck in the parliamentary committees and did
not see light.

Commenting on the recently introduced mandate of Chief
Secretary of the Interior Ministry, already five years ago,
Georgiev said it would be beneficial to society - at least as a
minimum in the most sensitive ministries, the security
institutions - to determine the circle of positions which it
will be obligatory to change in the case of a new government.
For example, the persons from the political cabinet of the
minister. Then again, the circle of officials who should not be
touched at all should also be defined. According to Georgiev, it
would not be to the interest of Bulgarian society to close the
State Agency for National Security (SANS).

According to the expert, the transfer of Chief Directorate for
Combating Organized Crime from the Interior Ministry to SANS
immediately brought some calm among criminal and economic police
officers. They felt relieved of the constant custody and
preference for the specialized police and immediately filled in
the freed niches. In other words, they stopped feeding them in
with ready cases for action and began to complete their work
themselves. The result was a beneficial competition which could
not be seen before so that the conclusion is that things should
be considered carefully from all angles.

The Interior Ministry did the maximum possible in the refugee
crisis, but that still was not enough, Georgiev said. A high
level of risk of penetration of illegal immigrants and epidemics
of foot-and-mouth disease, bluetongue and so on, on Bulgarian
territory will continue to exist until the effective protection
of the Bulgarian-Turkish border is developed. The solution was
suggested by Interior Ministry Chief Secretary Svetlozar Lazarov
- completion of the border fence along the entire
Bulgarian-Turkish border and introduction of modern control
systems. The human factor in itself cannot solve the problem,
Georgiev said./VI/BR