site.btaBulgaria Seen as Peripheral Country by NATO Partners, VP Iotova Says

Bulgaria is seen as a peripheral country by its NATO partners, Vice President Iliana Iotova said Friday after the second session of the International Forum on the Cyrillic alphabet in Plovdiv. She commented on the refusal of President Rumen Radev to head the Bulgarian delegation at the NATO summit. 

On Thursday, Radev did not accept the Council of Ministers' proposal to lead the Bulgarian delegation and participate in the July 9-11 NATO Summit in Washington, DC.

"I cannot comment on the subject because I do not know the text of the Ministerial Decision. I do not know if anyone else knows it, except the authors of the text. The difficulty, in my opinion, is the fact that we currently have a caretaker cabinet which the President of the country, according to the latest constitutional amendments, is not responsible for. There is some position of the Council of Ministers which must be revealed to everyone and receive its sanction. I must stress that we are a parliamentary republic, and the decisions to be taken at this meeting in Washington are extremely important. The degree of tension is very serious and it is not serious that we are not aware of this position," Iotova said.

The Vice President noted: “Bulgaria's participation in the NATO Summit was approached very frivolously. This doubt that was created, whether the President will go, whether the Prime Minister should go and as what is he going - as a Prime Minister or as a Foreign Minister. Just imagine how we look in the eyes of our partners. We look like a peripheral country, and that is why I believe that there must be a stable government as soon as possible to put an end to these experiments”. Iotova voiced hope to see what the Ministerial Decision says and to understand why the President was not consulted in any way beforehand, why there are reservations about presenting it to the National Assembly, as well. Bulgarian citizens have the right to know the Bulgarian Government's position on the matter, she stressed.

Iotova also commented on the handing over of the first mandate and the possible formation of a government in the near future. "If you ask for my personal opinion and observation, I still do not have an answer for myself whether GERB wants to make a government or will go to elections. There is definitely some hesitation in the first political force, if one judges by the statements that media transmit," the Vice President added.