President Georgi Purvanov has called a meeting of Bulgaria’s consultative council on national security on July 17 2008 to discuss the Chelopechene military munitions dump blast and ways to speed up the disposal of ageing weaponry.

Purvanov’s office said in a July 15 statement that the agenda would include reports from the defence minister and the chief of Bulgaria’s armed forces.

The principles of a new law on defence and the armed forces would be discussed, the statement said. Also to be discussed were an official report on the July 3 explosions at Chelopechene, which caused serious damage to private property nearby the munitions dump, the state of safety of military supply warehouses and ways to accelerate the process of disposing of surplus munitions.

Members of the consultative council of national security include the Prime Minister, Speaker of Parliament, ministers of defence, interior, foreign affairs and finance, the head of the State Agency for National Security, the chief of the armed forces and the heads of parliamentary groups in the National Assembly.

In a commentary on July 14, Bulgarian-language daily Sega said that the Chelopechene incident had prompted the Government to take immediate steps to come up with the money needed to get rid of “useless” munitions.

The Government had understood that the many questions arising from the incident had damaged their image more than the blasts themselves. It was remarkable that, unlike other disastrous incidents, the Government had cut through red tape to act quickly, Sega said.

Bulgaria’s military has paid 350 000 euro to a German company for a robot to be used to dispose of the unexploded munitions in the Chelopechene area.

On July 10, the Cabinet announced that it had amended regulations so that every legal entity and individual that had suffered losses because of the Chelopechene incident could be compensated.

The Cabinet set aside 500 000 leva for this compensation, and a further 500 000 leva for farmers who will incur losses because of the military operation to clear up the one km area around Chelopechene. Grain crops in the area are to be destroyed because they cannot be checked for debris or other substances from the explosions, the Cabinet said.