Bulgaria Denies Recall of Iran Ambassador, Cites End of Term

Bulgaria's foreign ministry has denied media reports that Iran is slated to recall its ambassador to the country after it placed responsibility for Burgas attack on Hezbollah.

"That's not true. The term of Iran's ambassador to Sofia expires at the end of this week. A new envoy, who was appointed months ago, will arrive in Bulgaria on the next day," Foreign Ministry spokesman Vessela Cherneva told TV channel Evropa on Sunday.

She explained that if a country decides to recall its ambassador to Bulgaria, it is obliged to inform officially the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

Earlier this week Iran's Ambassador to Sofia vehemently denied allegations that his country participated in the bombing of a bus last year in Bulgaria that killed Israeli tourists.

"This (the attack) has nothing to do with Iran," Ambassador Gholamreza Bageri told journalists. "We are against any form of terrorism and strongly condemn such actions."

The statement followed Tuesday's Bulgarian report stating that Iranian-backed Hezbollah may have been involved in last year's Burgas bus bombing

Bulgarian Interior Minister Tsvetan Tsvetanov stated Tuesday that Bulgarian investigators had "a well-founded assumption" that the perpetrators of the deadly attack belonged to the military formation of Hezbollah.

Tsvetanov revealed that a man with an Australian passport and a man with a Canadian passport were two of the three conspirators involved in the attack, which claimed the lives of five Israeli tourists and a Bulgarian bus driver.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told the families of the Israeli victims that the perpetrators of last year's terror attack in the Bulgarian city of Burgas "will pay the price for their deeds."

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