Bulgaria's capital Sofia is going to host the world energy summit entitled "Natural Gas for Europe" instead of the southern city of Plovdiv.
The news was confirmed Friday by the Mayor of Plovdiv, Slavcho Atanasov, as quoted by the BGNES news agency.
The world energy forum "Natural for Europe", which is organized by the Bulgarian government and President, is scheduled to take place on April 22-24, 2009.
The summit, which is expected to bring together dozens of acting heads of state and other top ranking officials from around the globe, was initially supposed to be held in the southern city of Plovdiv.
The Plovdiv Mayor Atanasov confirmed President Parvanov examined in person the conditions that the city had to offer for the meeting.
Now, however, Atanasov has been notified by the head of the Presidential office, General Nikola Kolev, that the summit will be taking place in the capital.
The decision to move the forum to Sofia is justified by the conclusion that Plovdiv did not have sufficient number of top hotels and presidential apartments to host all the high-ranking guests of the energy summit.
Upon inspection only two of the hotels in Plovdiv were found to meet the criteria for hosting heads of state. In addition, the infrastructure linking the city of Plovdiv to the Plovdiv Airport was found to be inadequate.
According to various reports, the "Natural Gas for Europe" Summit is supposed to be attended by top world politicians like the US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and the Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin.