Maritime Security 'More Important Nowadays' - Interim DefMin

Caretaker Defense Minister Velizar Shalamanov described maritime security as "more and more important" due to the complicated environment in the Black Sea.

Shalamanov also argued its significance was also increasing on a global scale, with the number of operations against terrorism and piracy on the rise, the Bulgarian news website Mediapool.bg reports.

He made his comments while attending a ceremony to assign officer ranks to 2014's Nikola Vaptsarov Naval Academy in the Black Sea city of Varna.

Bulgaria's recently appointed Chief of Defense, Vice Admiral Rumen Nikolov, was also at the event.

The Defense Minister, who assumed the office earlier this week, pointed out that the focus of the national Bulgaria-NATO 2020 program will be on the mechanism to boost defense expenditures in order to increase the armed forces' capabilities over the next years.

He said his ministry was presently looking into the implementation of targets set in the 2010 White Paper on Defense.