REUTERS: PRESIDENT-ELECT VOWS EU, NATO PUSH

Politics | November 19, 2001, Monday // 00:00

Reuters

By Anatoly Verbin

Bulgaria's president-elect Georgi Parvanov, a former Communist, said Monday he planned to work hard to secure his country's swift entry into the European Union and NATO.

``I would like to confirm that we will have maximum continuity in our foreign policy, especially where it concerns European and Euro-Atlantic integration, he told Reuters.

It was the first interview to foreign media by the 44-year-old leader of the Socialist Party (BSP) since he beat center-right incumbent Petar Stoyanov in Sunday's presidential election.
Stoyanov, running as an independent, had been a strong advocate of EU and NATO membership.

``I would like to say categorically that I will work to speed up talks on membership of the EU and the Alliance, naturally on the basis of meeting their criteria,'' Parvanov said.

He was speaking in his office at BSP headquarters, a large, dilapidated building where activists, clearly tired after a long campaign and a sleepless night, congratulated each other.
The president has limited powers at home but is Bulgaria's face abroad.

Bulgaria, a laggard in EU entry talks along with neighboring Romania, hopes to join the union in 2006. It is also seeking an invitation next year to join NATO.

Some diplomats have floated an idea recently that instead of granting immediate membership to a small group of NATO aspirant countries next year, a bigger group -- up to seven -- would be invited to start membership talks but would only be made full members after meeting all the criteria laid down.

Parvanov said that would be ``a minimal program,'' adding he hoped for outright NATO membership.

``I sincerely hope Bulgaria will get a real membership next year. For us it is not simply a recognition, but also an important guarantee of our security in the constant tension of the Balkans,'' he said.

POVERTY AND UNEMPLOYMENT

Stoyanov, 49, conceded defeat Sunday after a close run-off vote. First official partial results gave Parvanov 52 percent of the vote, against 48 for Stoyanov.

Turnout was a record low, and analysts said voters had vented their frustration after a decade of democratic reforms had failed to improve the people's impoverished lives.
Parvanov said Bulgaria's biggest problems were poverty and joblessness, while its biggest advantages were its geopolitical position and hardworking people.

He said he was ready to work with Prime Minister Simeon Saxe-Coburg in a constructive manner, despite his election support for Stoyanov.
In a June parliamentary poll, voters handed a resounding victory to a movement headed by Saxe-Coburg, the former King Simeon II, ousted by the Communists in 1946.

``There is nothing that should cloud our relations,'' Parvanov, head of the former Communist Party, said.

Parvanov said he intended to terminate his membership of the BSP. ``It would not be right for a head of state to be a member of a political party, even if it had nominated him. I intend to be head of state for all Bulgarians and this excludes party membership,'' he said.

Parvanov, a soft-spoken former historian, has succeeded in striking a balance between reforming the former Communist Party into a modern social democratic party -- which he has headed since 1996 -- and keeping its core electorate of elderly ex-communists satisfied.

He said he admired such social democratic leaders abroad as French Prime Minister Lionel Jospin and German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder.

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