News and Articles related to City of Varna
Current date: 2010-02-09 10:40

World Parliament of Bulgarians Opened Session in Varna

The Bulgarians in Ukraine, Moldova, Russia and in some Asian countries need to get Bulgarian citizenship, Chairman of the World Parliament of Bulgarians Academician Tsekomir Vodenicharov said at the opening of the second session of the formation held in this Black Sea city.

The same view was upheld by the Chairman of Expatriate Bulgarian, Professor Alexander Chirkov, who said that a bill needs to be passed quickly to speed up the procedure for the granting of Bulgarian citizenship.

The second session of the World Parliament of Bulgarians will consider a draft Bulgarian Doctrine, Vodenicharov said. The participants in the event will also adopt an address to the government and Parliament to speed up the talks with Turkey on the payment of compensations to refugees from Thrace. The session will also approve a proposal to the government to start talks with Greece on the recognition of a Bulgarian minority there. A suggestion will be discussed for the creation of a special fund for the construction of Bulgarian churches abroad.

The Bulgarian living in the Western Outlands (a territory Bulgaria ceded to Serbia under the Treaty of Neuilly) will approach the European institutions about violations of their religious rights and freedoms, Chairperson of the Bulgarian Helsinki Committee Zdenka Todorova said at the forum. The matter concerns the impossibility for Bulgarian priests to officiate at services in Bulgarian churches in the Western Outlands.

Todorova argued that in the past nine years Bulgaria turned its back on the problems in the Western Outlands and also in Vojvodina. She said assistance will be solicited from the European structures noting that the Netherlands is of the firm position that Serbia will not accede to the EU until it has honoured its commitments to the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia and until the country starts to observe the rights of the minorities.