Cherneva: Skopje and Sofia are in a tense period, radical groups want to escalate the situation
"Skopje and Sofia are in a tense period, radical groups from both countries want to escalate the situation", he says for 5 Channel Vesela Charneva the adviser of the former Bulgarian Prime Minister Petkov.
"Unfortunately, it happens, we have witnessed such tensions many times before, especially when there are elections. "But not only for elections, there are certain radical groups on both sides that do not miss the opportunity for escalation, and therefore it is important to build bilateral relations on the basis of trust," says Cherneva.
She believes that the withdrawal of the Bulgarian ambassador Angel Angelov from North Macedonia does not help in this situation
"We have a mechanism for bilateral coordination to avoid crisis situations, which provides for the two ministries of foreign affairs and the two embassies to work when there are crisis situations. I don't think that the withdrawal of the ambassador, even temporarily, is the most useful step", says Cherneva.
Due to the latest developments with Macedonia and Bulgaria, the Parliamentary Committee on Foreign Policy of Bulgaria unanimously adopted the Declaration at the last session, which must be submitted to a vote at a plenary session.
The document "categorically condemns the acts of violence and calls for violence against the Bulgarians in the RSM, their organizations and clubs, and especially the grave crime against the Bulgarian Hristian Pendikov, and firmly insists on taking systematic measures by all institutions to discover and bring them to justice the perpetrators". Bulgaria condemns "false and manipulative statements about the Bulgarian past in the public and political space of the RSM and accepts them as a deliberate instillation of hatred against Bulgaria and Bulgarians. "The protection of the rights of Bulgarian citizens and citizens with Bulgarian self-awareness in the RSM must be guaranteed through the full use of the instruments established in the negotiating framework approved by the European Union and by the decision of the Forty-seventh National Assembly of June 25, 2022," it says. in the Declaration, which was published by the Bulgarian agency BGNES, without abbreviations and editorial intervention.
