Bulgaria's President, Georgi Parvanov, declared Saturday that both USA and Russia were very pleased with the outcome of the Sofia Energy Summit.

"I am happy to say I have been authorized by both the American side and the Russian side to express their satisfaction with the Sofia forum", said the Bulgarian President during his press conference at the closing of the "Natural Gas for Europe" energy summit.

In his words, the energy summit gave an impetus to US-Russia dialogue and was the first occasion that the great powers had bilateral energy talks in years.

President Parvanov was explicit that the final Declaration of the participants was the major achievement of the Sofia Energy Summit because it included the set of common principles and rules in natural gas policies, to which all 28 participants - producer, transit and consumer states - had acceded.

The President did stress that the agenda of the Summit was centered exactly around the common principles in natural gas and energy policy, and not on specific energy projects even though those were indeed talked about in multilateral and bilateral meetings during the forum.

Bulgaria's Deputy PM and Foreign Minister, Ivaylo Kalfin, pointed out the Declaration was the product of multilateral talks spanning over more than two months. He and the President explicitly thanked the representatives of the European Commission and the EU Council Secretariat for their help with the talks on crafting the declaration.

Another major achievement of the World Energy Summit in Sofia, according to Parvanov, was the fact that small states definitely managed to get their voices heard.

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