JANUARY

· THE murder of top prosecutor Nikola Kolev shook the country and spawned a series of theories about the motives behind it. Kolev, 53, was shot dead near his home in the centre of Sofia on December 28 by two still-unidentified gunmen.

Edvin Sugarev, a former MP from the Union of Democratic Forces (UDF) and former Bulga-rian ambassador to India, alleged that Prosecutor-General Nikola Filchev was involved in the murder of Kolev.

Sugarev went as far as giving testimony in the Sofia Directorate of Internal Affairs in the presence of Interior Ministry chief secretary Boiko Borissov, and later said he had evidence. So far, however, Sugarev has failed to produce it.



· ON the night of December 31, 2002, the two smallest units of the Kozlodui nuclear power plant, units 1 and 2, were disconnected from the national power gird and were permanently shut down.

Later in the month, the Supreme Administrative Court (SAC) overruled a decision by the Government to shut down another two units - 3 and 4 - in 2006.



· HEAVY snowfalls and low temperatures in January caused the usual winter season problems - closed roads and villages in remote areas without electricity and water.

The road administration warned motorists to observe the regulations and keep in mind the bad conditions and the closed roads.

Sofia suffered the usual traffic jams and icy roads, in spite of efforts by the municipality to clear the snow.



· AT the end of January, Foreign Minister Solomon Passi had talks with US secretary of state Colin Powell and confirmed Bulgaria's support against the regime of Saddam Hussein.

According to Passi, at that stage Bulgaria had not yet received an official US request for military support in an eventual operation in Iraq.

Meanwhile, people protested in Sofia against the Government's stance on the Iraqi crisis and against any involvement of Bulgaria in any armed conflict.





FEBRUARY

· A BOMB attack on the apartment of one of the Crown Agents officials, Kristian Andersen, in the Lozenets area in Sofia, caused anxiety and a wave of speculation

The bomb was thrown on the balcony of the apartment and gutted the apartment.

At the time of the blast Andersen was with his family abroad and was unharmed.

John Brown, Crown Agents principal customs adviser, said that in spite of the bomb, Andersen would return to his duties once his vacation was over. Brown also said that there had been no threats to Crown Agents prior to the attack.

In the Bulgarian-language media, there was speculation that the bomb was intended for the occupant of the apartment below Andersen's - Pesho "Kucheto", who allegedly was involved in smuggling channels.



· THE Iraqi crisis became one of the main items on the agenda of Bulgarian politicians.

At the beginning of the month, President Georgi Purvanov urged stronger international pressure on the regime of Saddam Hussein to co-operate with UN weapons inspectors.

Later in February, the US asked Bulgaria to allow it and its allies to move troops and equipment through the territory of the country in the event of a war in Iraq.



· CONTROVERSY started around the then director-general of the Bulgarian Telegraph Agency (BTA), Stoyan Cheshmedjiev. Most BTA employees went on symbolic strike in protest against the reorganisations and the termination of the labour contracts of several journalists. The protesters demanded the resignation of Cheshmedjiev and the reinstatement of the sacked journalists.



· A STATEMENT by French president Jacques Chirac attacking the support being given to the US about Iraq by several South Eastern European countries, among them Bulgaria, provoked angry reactions.

European Affairs Minister Meglena Kuneva said that the Bulgarian position on Iraq did not differ from that of the EU.

Deputy Foreign Minister Lyubomir Ivanov said that the statement of Chirac was indicative of a certain nervousness.

UDF leader Nadezhda Mihai-lova condemned the words of Chirac and said a good family was recognised by the way it treats its new members.





MARCH

· THE murder of prominent Bulgarian billionaire Ilia Pavlov at the beginning of March led to an outpouring of public statements by political and business leaders regretting his murder, and an orgy of speculation about why he was killed.

A single bullet fired in front of MG's corporate headquarters in the Durvenitsa district of Sofia, killing Pavlov, launched a series of guesses about the ultimate perpetrators, people involved and motives behind the murder.

On the way out of his office, while talking on his mobile phone, the richest man in Bulgaria was shot with an unsilenced sniper rifle, 20 metres from MG's front door.

The bullet left three children without a father, a multi-billion business without a president, and 12 000 people without the employer who had been a household name throughout the country.

The assassination raised insecurity in the business sector of the country, and also political issues.

"The shooting proves that the criminals in Bulgaria consider themselves untouchable," said Interior Minister Georgi Petkanov.



· SOFIA city council said it would introduce new fines for parking on pavements and in public parks. The fine would be 20 leva, but if offenders declined to pay, this would go up to 150 leva.

The measure would apply mainly to small streets where tow-away trucks could not enter, and whose pavements were usually blocked by parked cars. Inspectors would put stickers advising of the fines on the windscreens of offending cars.

Public transport fees were to go up by 10 stotinki to 50 stotinki a trip. Sofia city council introduced the new prices of the tickets for public transport. With the new ticket prices, the prices of fines increased. The new fine for those without tickets would be five leva and would allow the passenger to continue travelling.

The council introduced a new 10 leva fine for those without tickets and without identification, which did not allow the offender to continue travelling on the bus, tram or trolley bus. Those who refuse to pay either fine would face a 50 leva fine.



· BULGARIA, officially listed by the US administration as among the 30-country "coalition of the willing" sealed its endorsement of action against Iraq even as thousands of troops massed for the border crossing that would signal the formal start of the military campaign to oust Saddam Hussein.

In a special address, delivered to the nation, Prime Minister Simeon Saxe-Coburg said that war was the only mechanism left to disarm Iraq.

"Bulgaria persistently made efforts to help finding a peaceful solution to the crisis. We used every diplomatic means possible and contacts, in the UN Security Council, the EU and NATO, as well as bilaterally, in order to reach the desired goal - to remove the threat to international peace and stability that the regime in Baghdad represents," Saxe-Coburg said.



APRIL

· PROTESTS against the war in Iraq and Bulgaria's involvement in the conflict gained momentum.

The opposition Bulgarian Socialist Party positioned itself firmly against the war, forming a "BG Peace Coalition", with its leader Sergei Stanishev securing himself a high-profile place at the head of a series of protests.

The BG Peace Coalition organised a petition against the war, which was to be presented to Prime Minister Simeon Saxe-Coburg.

The petition was in the form of ballots bearing the inscription "I am against the war! I am against Bulgaria's involvement in the war!"

According to reports, in Varna alone more than 5000 signatures were collected.



· A GROUP of skinheads brutally attacked popular singer John Kabamba, from the Democratic Republic of the Congo, in the centre of Sofia.

At least seven men followed Kabamba, who has refugee status in Bulgaria, on his way to change money at a kiosk close to the National Palace of Culture (NDK) on Vitosha Boulevard. They attacked him from behind as he crossed the street.

"I saw nothing," said Kabamba. "The first thing I heard and felt was a bottle being smashed over my head." As he lifted his hands to protect himself, a baseball bat was swung in his face before the men began kicking and punching him. He managed to push them away for a moment and then ran towards a taxi on the other side of the street. "I felt they wanted to kill me," he said. "They were shouting things like 'Blacks out!' and "Black son of a bitch - we're going to show you!"



· BULGARIA announced it was to send a security and peacekeeping unit in Iraq instead of the nuclear-biological-chemical (NBC) protection unit.

The announcement was made by Deputy Foreign Minister Lyubomir Ivanov and Deputy Defence Minister Ivo Ivanov.

Ivo Ivanov said it was not clear how many troops would be sent.

He said that the new unit could be set up quickly because there were soldiers who had taken part in similar missions before, while some of the NBC unit members could also be used.

The initial deployment would be of company strength.

Ivo Ivanov, however, did not exclude the possibility of sending a larger unit if there was enough money to do so.

He said that the main tasks of the unit would include logistical support and security measures.





MAY

· BULGARIA got caught in the worldwide hysteria caused by the SARS virus, which killed dozens in Asia and Canada. The first suspected cases appeared in Bulgaria but none were confirmed. Health authorities said there was no ground for panic.

The first case was of a 33-year-old man who returned to Sofia from Toronto on April 16 after a long stay in Canada. Several days later he developed the symptoms of a respiratory disease - cough, fever, and general weakness. His family doctor advised him to go to the Hospital for Infectious Diseases, where there was an entire ward ready to take care of people with SARS. The patient was diagnosed with pneumonia and hospitalised. The news hit the media at the beginning of May. His family members and people who had been in close contact with him, were put under observation by health authorities.

The tests showed he did not have SARS.

However, the Foreign Ministry issued a warning advising Bulga-rians to avoid travelling to China, Hong Kong, Singapore and Taiwan, which were the most seriously affected by the atypical pneumonia.



· BULGARIA sweltered as hot currents of air swept north from Africa and temperatures soared to a record high of 37 degrees Celsius.

The National Institute of Meteorology and Hydrology of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences said that these temperatures were the highest for the time of year since 1888, the year of the first meteorological measuring. In Veliko Turnovo it was 36 degrees Celsius, Svishtov 35, and Sofia 31.



· SOON, it got really hot in the media, however, when the Editor-in-Chief of a Varna daily newspaper was seriously assaulted in what some believed was a revenge attack for reports alleging municipal corruption. Anton Lukov, 37, Editor-in-Chief of the Varna daily newspaper Chernomorie and owner of the information website Dnes +, was attacked by a group of unidentified men, who hit him with a metal pipe and kicked him after he lost consciousness. Lukov was taken to hospital with a broken upper jaw, broken arm and medium brain injury. He was one of the founders of the NMSII in Varna and was a public relations officer for former Varna mayor Hristo Kirchev. The Bulgarian Media Coalition (BMC) said attacks against journalists went unpunished. The BMC demanded an urgent meeting with heads of law enforcement agencies, to receive guarantees that the cases of attacks against journalists would be investigated in a timely manner and the perpetrators would be brought to justice. The Union of Bulgarian Journalists (UBJ) also condemned the assault on Lukov.



· ALTHOUGH for Lukov May was not a good month, another journalist would have her most pleasant memories from the same time of the year. Television reporter Margarita Vasseva of bTV married Staff-Sergeant Jason Smith, media liaison officer for the US forces that were based at Sarafovo, on May 14.

Vasseva, 26, was sent against her will to report from the 409th Air Expeditionary Group that was temporarily based in Sarafovo to provide refuelling for coalition aircraft. "I was so upset and cried during the whole trip to Sarafovo," she said, adding that it took her three days to start to like the experience there.

At the outset, she had been given Smith's mobile phone number, but did not want to call him. "How could I possibly imagine that this would be my future husband?" she said. They married after a two-week long romance. Vasseva-Smith went to Charleston, US, Smith's home, where his family lives. Smith was re-deployed to Kyrgyzstan for some time.





JUNE

· AFTER several instances of deliberately bad attitude by Macedonian authorities towards Bulgarian nationals were reported, in June Macedonia was accused by Bulgaria of breaching a bilateral consular convention, which requires that information be provided about administrative measures taken against Bulgarian citizens. Bulgarian Deputy Foreign Minister Katia Todorova visited Macedonia, following two cases of alleged human rights infringement against Bulgarian citizens visiting Macedonia. Bulgarian Anton Spassov allegedly was beaten by Macedonian police officers and expelled from the country after saying he was a Bulgarian. Anna Paskova was had similar experience. Paskova was arrested in Skopje after stating that there was no Macedonian minority in Bulgaria, being attacked by bus passengers, and accused of causing public disorder. She had to pay a 10 000 denar fine (about 250 euro). Paskova said she was beaten by Skopje police and a policeman tried to rape her. She also complained about the refusal of the Macedonians to grant her a lawyer and announced she would sue Macedonia in the European Court on Human Rights.



· ANOTHER group of people also claimed their human rights were breached. A group of 20 anti-globalisation activists, all European Union citizens, were detained at the Serbian-Bulgarian border, near the Serbian town of Dimitrovrad, and refused entry to Bulgaria. The group was hoping to reach the EU summit which was to be held in Thessaloniki, Greece, from June 19 to 25. They were travelling through Balkan countries by bicycle, along with a tractor and a caravan holding their belongings to tell people the EU intended to enslave them. The group stayed at the border for several more days. They had protest performances in Dimitrovgrad, Serbia. On June 8, they left the camp and started for Macedonia, intending to enter Greece through there. While at the Bulgarian border, some tried to contact their embassies for help. Asked to comment, an officer from the German Embassy in Sofia told The Echo: "No comment". The Netherlands embassy press attache could not be reached for comment. Several Bulgarian ecological NGOs - Balkani (Balkans), Za zemiata (For the Earth) and a group of Sofia anarchists travelled to the camp to talk to the activists. Serbian border police told The Echo that the group had given the impression of being extremely dirty, smelly and dishevelled, but they were not violent and did not do anything wrong. There were some complaints from Dimitrovgrad residents that the activists had stolen small items from shops.



· AN attempt to shut up journalists amazed the country. The Prosecutor's Office filed a case of an "act of hooliganism" against those who broadcast a report about the possible dual Bulgarian-Spanish citizenship of Prime Minister Simeon Saxe-Coburg. This happened after Radi Naidenov, head of the Prime Minister's office, sent an official letter to the prosecutor. The punishment for "hooliganism" is up to five years in prison. The Association of Radio and TV Broadcasters issued a declaration in support of the journalists. Darik reported that, according to an employee of the Spanish ministry of justice, Saxe-Coburg had Spanish citizenship when he took office as Prime Minister. By law, individuals with dual citizenship cannot hold state office. Later it emerged that Saxe-Coburg did not have Spanish citizenship but only a Spanish diplomatic passport provided for him by the Spanish King Juan Carlos as a personal favour while Saxe-Coburg was in exile. According to the deputy district prosecutor Petar Chalumov, the case was grounded on a ruling of the Supreme Court from 1974 on acts of hooliganism. The journalists who had reported the story, were questioned by prosecutors but no further action was taken against them. The case, however, provoked comments that the episode created a serious precedent giving grounds for future prosecution against the media.



· ANOTHER melodrama took place shortly after that incident. Four MPs asked Prime Minister Simeon Saxe-Coburg for an explanation for Education Minister Vladimir Atanassov's discussion of women's breasts in the latest issue of Bulgarian Playboy.

In an interview with the June issue of Playboy, Atanassov described women's breasts as "the object of a complex admiration". He said breasts were "the basis of aesthetics". While men were "primitive slaves of instinct", he said, "the cultivated attitude towards women raises their spirit". Playboy described Atanassov as "a bon vivant" who "likes good wine, good cigars and women with beautiful breasts". Bulgarian Playboy then Editor-in-Chief Antony Georgiev said MPs Kina Andree-va, Ivan Ivanov and Dimitar Kamburov were outraged by the minister's appearance in Playboy and had requested an explanation from the Prime Minister for the appearance of a Cabinet member in a "magazine of this type".

Georgiev said Atanassov's appearance in Playboy was a strong PR move, and another minister whose name was still secret was to be interviewed for the next month's issue. It later turned out to be Justice Minister Anton Stankov.





JULY

· AT the start of July, President Georgi Purvanov and Interior Ministry chief secretary Boiko Borissov met at Purvanov's request to discuss changes to anti-crime laws.

One of the major proposals was an amendment to the Criminal Procedure Code, providing for up to 10 years in jail for anyone handling or making explosive devices.

The second major proposal aimed at criminalising the mediation in getting ransom for stolen cars. Under the amendment, anyone said to have stolen a car with the intent to demand ransom might face a sentence of up to 10 years in prison.

Borissov also proposed up to five years for child molestation and proposed the use of special intelligence devices in such cases.





AUGUST

· A BULGARIAN, thought to be involved in trafficking cocaine through Bulgaria was arrested in Bolivia during an international police operation code-named Moonlight. Police in the Bolivian city of Santa Cruz seized five tons of cocaine which had been mixed with powdered mashed potatoes to avoid suspicion. Three tons were thought to be destined for Bulgaria. Their approximate street value was estimated at $500 million. Operation Moonlight involved officials from the US Drug Enforcement Agency, European and South American law enforcement agencies. The National Service for Combating Organised Crime acted on Bulgaria's behalf.



· BULGARIA registered a four-year record low unemployment of 13.21 per cent, Social Minister Hristina Hristova announced in late August.

She released figures showing that unemployment figures for July were 163 986 less than in the same month of the previous year. The unemployment was lowest in Sofia, at 3.76 per cent, and highest in Turgovishte, at 29.31 per cent. The number of long-term unemployed had decreased continuously in the past year.



· UNESCO signed an agreement to restore seven houses in the Old City of Plovdiv during Secretary-General Koichiro Matsura's visit to Sofia.

The three-year old project was worth $999 738, which was to be provided by the UNESCO Japa-nese Trust Fund for the Preser-vation of World Cultural Heritage.

A $25 000 management contract, also funded by UNESCO, was signed for the restoration of the Forty Holy Martyrs church in Veliko Turnovo.





SEPTEMBER

· THE trial of six Bulgarian medics accused of infecting more than 400 Libyan children with HIV brought new anxiety. The Libyan prosecutor asked for the death penalty for the six medics, as well as more than $ 4.2 billion compensation for the families of the infected children. The plea of the defence was postponed for the next hearing. The trial was rescheduled because lawyers for the police officers and the prison guards accused of torturing the medics were not ready to present arguments.

The prosecutor based his plea on two main pieces of evidence - the confession of two of the nurses, Christiana Vulcheva and Nassya Nenova and the Palestinian medic Ashraf, and the banks of blood plasma discovered in the home of Vulcheva after her arrest.

The court continued to admit the confessions of the three as evidence, in spite the fact that they allegedly were extracted using torture.

According to the confessions, Nenova injected the children with the infected blood, thinking she was doing an experiment with a new medicine.



· INTERNATIONAL news agency reports quoting the United Nations special envoy to Liberia as naming Bulgaria among countries which should send peacekeepers to the troubled African state sparked a debate about the country's foreign commitments.

Bulgaria had not yet received an official request to send servicemen to that region of the world, both Defence Minister Nikolai Svinarov and Foreign Minister Solomon Passi said in reaction to the statement. This was confirmed by armed forces chief General Nikola Kolev. Top brass said the UN envoy's statement was possibly just preliminary probing whether this country would join such mission.

At the time, Bulgaria was reported to be involved in 12 peace-keeping missions abroad.

It was at the limit of its financial capacity to support new ones, Svinarov said. Bulgarian troops were serving in the Western Balkans, Afghanistan, and Iraq, among other hot spots.

Ten per cent of Bulgaria's military budget, which is about 86 million leva, goes to peacekeeping missions. Two per cent of Bulga-rian army personnel were currently involved in such missions abroad, Kolev said on returning from a session of the NATO military council in Brussels.



· THE diplomatic circuit went through a season of change, with the departure of a number of ambassadors and the arrival of their successors.

In September, Swedish ambassador Sten Ask and UK ambassador Ian Soutar left. Soutar told The Echo, "When one comes to leave a country where one has served one leaves with mixed feelings. I leave with some degree of satisfaction that my time in Bulgaria has seen Bulgaria get the long-awaited invitation to NATO. We have not yet got entry into the EU of Bulgaria but we have a good clear roadmap and a target date of January 1, 2007, both of which this embassy and I personally were very much involved in achieving," Soutar said.

Ask said, "I have spent five years in this wonderful country and I am going to take back home many memories".

Polish ambassador Jaroslaw Lindenberg came to the end of his five-year term in Sofia. Argentina and Lebanon were also soon to change their heads of mission.





OCTOBER

· RUSSIAN businessman Mi-chael Chorny was the star newsmaker in October.

He was again officially barred by authorities after he was allowed to enter the country by the court after a secret investigation, so secret that even the Interior Ministry did not know about it. In 2000 the National Security Service expelled Chorny and another Russian businessman, Denis Ershov, saying the two were a threat to the national security of Bulgaria. A case was initiated after an appeal by the Sofia City Prosecution (SCP) and the NSS against a decision in May by the court to allow Chorny to return to the country. And at last in October the Sofia Court of Cassation overruled an appeal by Chorny against the National Security Service order to expel the businessman.

Maybe with that grave case in mind, the Interior Ministry decided to set up a new Migration Directorate to take charge of administrative control of foreigners in Bulgaria. This was one of the changes to the Interior Ministry Act that were approved by Parliament also in October. The establishment of a migration authority is provided for in the road map for Bulgaria's accession to the EU, and the updated plan for adoption of the Schengen legislation. The new migration directorate will issue and terminate the residence permits of foreigners in Bulgaria, according to the amendments to the act. The new directorate will have representatives in the regional police departments.

The responsibilities of the new division will include the issuing, refusal and withdrawal of foreigners' long-term residence permits, identification of illegally residing foreigners, and the issuing of travel documents for members of foreign diplomatic missions in Bulgaria.



· EVEN the new directorate could not help a Chinese artist who got into trouble in Sofia, but the trouble came from her own compatriots. Zhang Cui Ying was invited to exhibit her work by National Movement Simeon II MP Snezhina Chipeva, after Chipeva met the artist at the European Parliament in February 2003. She sent her paintings and her representatives started arranging them in the MPs Club. After everything had been arranged, an officer of the Chinese embassy arrived and asked Parliament's administration to stop the exhibition. The pictures were removed, and the representatives were told that the exhibition had been postponed because the artist had not come in person. Zhang Cui Ying practices Falun Dafa, a traditional Chinese teaching of spiritual and physical perfection, vehemently opposed by the Beijing government. The Chinese embassy said the followers of Falun Dafa represent a sect that acts against the Chinese state and government. The embassy said more than 2000 people had died because the teaching forbids the taking of medicines. They said that Parliament, not the embassy, had stopped the exhibition, but the embassy was pleased this had been done.



· AFTER a short pause Chorny again appeared at the scene. He broke the news that he donated $200 000 to the UDF-aligned Democracy Foundation, chaired by former leader of the UDF Ivan Kostov. Kostov was at the head of the Bulgarian Government when Chorny was expelled from the country. The National Service for Combating Organised Crime (NSCOC) did an investigation into whether money laundering took place when Chorny gave the donation to the Democracy Foundation.

The head of the Financial Intelligence Agency, Vassil Kirov, said earlier that there had been indications that the money might have been part of a money-laundering scheme and that his institution had initiated an internal check-up. Kostov said in an interview with bTV that the money did not belong to Chorny. According to Kostov, the money was donated by a Bulgarian company through the offshore Cyprus company Roment Trading Ltd, which Chorny claimed was his. Kostov said the allegations were a part of a plot hatched by former members of the communist-era State Security against him and the UDF.





NOVEMBER

· THE European Commission released on November 5 the EC Strategy Paper and Report on the progress towards EU accession by Bulgaria, Romania and Turkey. Both documents said that Bulgaria and Romania should sign a common accession treaty at the latest towards the end of 2005, with a view of joining the European Union in 2007.

EU Enlargement Commi-ssioner Guenter Verheugen said that Bulgaria and Romania were being treated as a package for the time being, but he did not rule out the possibility of the two finalising accession negotiations separately.



· BITTER words and the possibility of court action followed a decision by the Council for Electronic Media (CEM) to cancel the court registration of Union Television, which produced and broadcast the Den TV national cable programme. The CEM shut down Den alleging that one of its evening shows promoted "national, political, ethnic, religious and racial intolerance."

In addition to shutting down the station, CEM imposed on Den TV the maximum fine, 15 000 leva. The decision was prompted by the allegations that the evening talk show, consisting mainly of phone calls from viewers, "From Telephone To Microphone" hosted by German national Nick Stein, promoted ethnic intolerance. Allegedly Stein made statements and comments against the Movement for Rights and Freedom, the party of the ethnic Turks in Bulgaria.



· A TWO-DAY peer review of the Kozlodui nuclear power plant by a European Union team in late November found that units 3 and 4 were safe and could be used. According to Antonio Madona, leader of the expert group, improvements to the two units recommended two years ago, have been done. Madona, however, declined to say whether it would be possible for the two units to continue operating beyond their official closure deadline in 2006. He said the mission of the review was not to define whether they should be closed or not.





DECEMBER

· IN the wake of terrorist attacks in Istanbul, security measures around embassies in Sofia and diplomatic missions elsewhere in Bulgaria were visibly tightened.

The security perimeter around the missions of the UK, the US and Turkey was widened and new fences and barriers were installed.

The Ministry of Transport and Communication increased the level of alertness at all ports and airports, while the border police tightened security at state borders and other checkpoints.



· IN Amsterdam, an assassin killed Konstantin "Samokovetsa" Dimitrov and wounded Bulgarian model Tsetsi Krassimirova who was accompanying him.

Allegedly Dimitrov was one of the most influential bosses of the underground criminal groups and was involved in smuggling operations and drug trafficking.

Dimitrov's murder launched a wave of speculation as to who would be his successor.

Several days before the murder of Dimitrov, Metodi "Meto Ilianskia" Metodiev, who was allegedly one of the leaders in the criminal groups around Dimitrov, disappeared in suspicious circumstances.

The police started a nation-wide operation to arrest people meant to be serving sentences as well as people against whom there was enough evidence to start a trial.

In the three-day operation the police arrested 577 people. Of these, 108 were supposed to be in jail, and 368 were on the national wanted list for detention in connection with criminal trials. No bosses of the well-known organised crime groups were arrested.



· A HIGH-RANKING delegation from the US state department and the Pentagon arrived in Sofia to discuss possible future location of American forces in Bulgarian military bases.

Douglas Feith, US under-secretary of defence for policy, arrived with a delegation for consultations with the Bulgarian Government. Talks on details would probably start at the beginning of next year, Government spokesperson Dimitar Tsonev told journalists.



· THE trial in Libya of six Bulgarian medics accused of intentionally infecting more than 400 Libyan children with HIV in the Benghazi children's hospital saw new developments.

The Criminal Court in Benghazi ordered a new expert study of the case record. The expert study was to be conducted by 12 local doctors who were supposed to look into all medical evidence on the case, including a report by HIV experts Luc Montagnier and Vittorio Colizzi, according to which the Bulgarians were innocent and the infection was caused by bad hygiene in the hospital.