A court hearing of Bulgaria's ex-prime minister murder case stirred media interest on Thursday as Ilya Pavlov, president of MG Corporation and former notorious Multigrup, testified in court.

Pavlov said he had no conflicts with former Prime Minister Andrey Lukanov. The businessman said he had only professional contacts with Lukanov. Six months before the murder, Pavlov sensed a kind of nervousness in Andrey Lukanov but thought that it was a result of the political life that he led. During the murder, Iliya Pavlov was in Palma de Majorka to attend a meeting of Multigroup management.

Two Ukrainian citizens Alexei Kichatov and Alexander Rusov are accused of killing Lukanov in 1996.

In October last year Bulgaria's former President Zhelev said that the assassination of former Prime Minister Andrey Lukanov was organized by people close to the former socialist Prime Minister Videnov. Zhelev testified in Lukanov's murder case in the Sofia City Court.

Lukanov, once a member of the Moscow-trained Bulgarian communist elite, served as government head for the Socialist Party from 1989 to 1990. At the time of the slaying he was a lawmaker for his party. Lukanov was murdered on October 2, 1996 in front of his home in Sofia.