The Bulgarian government will propose to the President to withdraw all envoys in the country's diplomatic missions abroad who were revealed to have collaborated with the country's former communist regime 'State Security' service.

This was announced by Bulgaria's Foreign Minister Nikolay Mladenov, who added that legislative measures are prepared, which will ban the appointment of former State Security (DS) agents as diplomats.

An EU country's Foreign Minister has already contacted Mladenov asking him whether the Bulgarian Ambassador in his or her state will be withdrawn, Bulgaria's top diplomat revealed at a news conference Wednesday.

Mladenov further vowed that the ruling center-right party GERB will draft legislation to ban people who worked for the DS, an overarching structure in pre-1989 Bulgaria uniting the intelligence, the counter-intelligence and the secret police, from holding offices in the Bulgarian diplomatic corps.

On Tuesday, a special Bulgarian panel, investigating the communist-era police files, known as the Files' Commission, revealed that 192 Bulgarian Foreign Ministry employees have had ties with the former Communist State Security. Among those 192, 41 are current Bulgarian diplomats.

The list of DS collaborators includes the Bulgarian ambassadors in the UK, Germany, Italy, UN (New York and Geneva), Portugal, Spain, the Netherlands, Turkey, Russia, China, Sweden, Romania, Norway, Japan, Qatar, Kuwait, Syria, Egypt, Bosnia, Greece, the Vatican, Slovakia, Albania, Georgia, Armenia, and Venezuela.

Foreign Minister Mladenov made it clear he feared the host countries' leaders would no longer trust the respective Bulgarian diplomats now that those have been revealed to have collaborated with the former communist intelligence and secret police, which is why they need to be dismissed in order to preserve the credibility and trust for Bulgaria's diplomatic corps.

Earlier on Wednesday, Bulgaria's Prime Minister Boyko Borisov also stated that the Ambassadors will be fired. He declared he was "ashamed" of the present situation, and said now he could not look foreign leaders in the eyes knowing his (i.e. Bulgaria's) ambassador to their country was involved with former DS.

"I think we should let them go, and I believe my party will support me," he stated, referring to the ruling centrist GERB.

When asked if the ministerial seat of Diaspora Minister Bozhidar Dimitrov, a man who is known to have worked for the DS on a secret mission to the Vatican back in the communist days, does not represent double standards, Borisov said Dimitrov was just one exception that cannot be compared with fact that almost half of Bulgaria's diplomatic corps consists of secret agents, and that Dimitrov held the post of a minister without a portfolio.

The Bulgarian rightist Blue coalition also demanded that all diplomats listed as former agents should be replaced.

The oppositional leftist Bulgarian Socialist Party, though, opposed the potential withdrawal of the diplomats.

Reacting to Borisov and Mladenov's move to sack all diplomats with DS past, Bulgarian President Georgi Parvanov did defend the diplomats in question pointing out their contribution to the country's NATO and EU integration in the past 20 yaers, and criticizing the Borisov Cabinet for having double standards.

According to Bulgaria's former Foreign Minster Solomon Passy (2001-2005), the diplomats must be assessed based on their qualities rather than their past; he believes the so called "lustration" issue should have been settled 20 years ago.