In a decision which terminated a longstanding spat, Bulgaria and Russia backed off arms licensing claims toward each other. The agreement in principle was reached during the October 9 session of the mixed Bulgarian-Russian commission in Sofia chaired by Russia's vice prime minister Sergey Sobyanin.

The sides will sign an inter-governmental agreement to this effect before the year expires, said Bulgaria's Economy and Energy Minister Petar Dimitrov, as quoted by mediapool.bg. Thereafter, all licensing issues will be decided at a corporate level, he added.

The agreement will also regulate all legal matters and will underscore intentions to continue co-operation in the defence technical sphere.

The arms licensing decision represents the good-will resolution of a dispute marring Bulgarian-Russian relations for more than 15 years. The spat peaked last year when Russia requested that Bulgaria be banned from exporting arms to a score of countries on the grounds that Bulgaria's arms plants manufactured "pirated" weaponry and thus damaging Russia's economic interests.

For its part, Bulgaria had maintained that its plants produced arms with a lot of upgrades of their own, hence a licence extension was irrelevant.

Russia also committed to clear outstanding debt toward Bulgaria, as well as showed resolve to build a ferry link between Bulgaria's port of Varna and Russia's port of Kavkaz.

Russia would clean its debt record of $30 million with one-off payment, Dimitrov said.

In regard to the ferry link, both sides stand ready to timely launch it despite administrative and financial issues that remain unresolved.