Vazrazhdane floor leader Kostadin Kostadinov, who spoke in Parliament on Wednesday, criticized Defence Minister Todor Tagarev's comments made at the conference with the heads of the military attache offices of the Republic of Bulgaria's overseas representations, which was held on July 3 in Sofia. According to Kostadinov, Tagarev's statement that Bulgaria should support its allies by providing forward deployment on the Black Sea coast, no matter the Montreux Convention regarding the Regime of the Straits, has the potential to spark a huge international scandal.
Bulgarian National Television quoted Tagarev on Monday as saying: "Notwithstanding the Montreux Convention, Bulgaria must ensure that our allies are able to help us secure the Black Sea region with intelligence and means of effective influence, such as the so-called 'kinetic weapons'".
The forum was attended by Prime Minister Nikolay Denkov, Chief of Defence Admiral Emil Eftimov and Director of the Defence Intelligence Service Brigadier General Venelin Venev.
According to the Defence Minister, Bulgaria should effectively ensure the forward deployment of its allies on its territory, while the multinational battle group should expand into a brigade.
Kostadinov said: "The individual Tagarev dared to state that we should consider expanding the allied naval potential in the Black Sea by creating a possible naval base of the United States in Bulgaria". According to Kostadinov, such an act would constitute a grave breach of international law and particularly of the Montreux Convention signed in 1936, which prohibits the presence of foreign warships, from countries that do not border the Black Sea, for periods longer than 21 days.
Kostadinov noted that the Montreux Convention has an important goal - to prevent the militarization of the Black Sea region. Kostadinov said that the agreement gives any Black Sea state the legitimate right to declare as a military target other warships that stay more than 21 days in the Black Sea.
According to the leader of Vazrazhdane, bringing any warships into the Black Sea is not a problem at the moment. He added: "Americans do this regularly, but they comply with the Montreux Convention and on the 21st day at the latest their ships leave the Black Sea, and then other ships arrive". Kostadinov said that they do what is called naval rotation, however, by bringing in a permanently stationed US fleet here the Convention would be effectively disavowed.
Kostadinov said that bringing in any foreign military non-Black-Sea fleet in times of an ongoing war would escalate tensions. He warned other politicians not to play with fire.
/RY/
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