Leader of Bulgaria's DPS Requests Right of Reply In NY Times, Dismisses Pro-Russian Label

The leader of Bulgaria's oppositional party Movement for Rights and Freedoms (DPS) Lyutvi Mestan requested a right of reply in New York Times due to a publication labeling his party as pro-Russian.

In a letter addressed to the editor-in-chief of New York Times, Mestan refers to the article entitled "How Putin Forged a Pipeline Deal That Derailed" published on 30 December 2014.

Mestan pointed to the paragraph in which the authors of the article comment on the 2013 early parliamentary elections in Bulgaria.

According to them, the elections were in Putin's favour, as they produced a coalition government between two pro-Russian parties - the Bulgarian Socialist Party (BSP) and DPS.

Mestan dismissed the pro-Russian label of his party as being utterly incorrect and untrue.

He underlined that ever since its establishment on 4 January 1990 until today, DPS has been Bulgaria's most continuous Euro-Atlantic party.

Mestan disproves the authors of the article by submitting several arguments in favour of DPS's Euro-Atlantic stance.

According to him, DPS was the first party since the beginning of the country's transition from totalitarianism to democracy to declare its official party position on Bulgaria's accession to NATO as strategic priority of the country's foreign policy.

Mestan states that throughout the years the political behaviour of DPS has always been in compliance with this position.

He reminds that the then oppositional DPS was the only party to support the government of Prime Minister Ivan Kostov in granting air space for NATO to carry out its air strikes against Yugoslavia in 1999.

Mestan says that it was not coincidence that Bulgaria's accession to NATO happened in 2004 when DPS was part of the...