In a week’s time, a delegation from the US department of homeland security will visit Bulgaria to discuss the problem with US visa restrictions for Bulgarian nationals, the Government’s media service said on April 3 2008.

Bulgarian Prime Minister Sergei Stanishev, who is currently attending the Nato summit in Bucharest, has held a meeting with US president George Bush. The latter assured Stanishev of his readiness to solve the problem, the Government’s media office said.

On March 28 2008, the US consul in Sofia Daniel Perrone said that Bulgaria needed to prove that it could fight organised crime in an effective manner if it wanted the US to lift visa restrictions for Bulgarian nationals.

Bulgaria had made steady progress over the past two years and the percentage of rejected visa applications had come down from about 23 per cent to 14 per cent, he said.

Last year, the US congress softened the country's visa regulations, but also reduced the requirement on the number of rejected applications from candidate countries for visa waivers to 10 per cent.