The files of the Cabinet members are next on the agenda of the Commission on the Disclosure of the Records and Ascertainment of Involvement with the Former State Security and the Intelligence Agency of the General Staff (the Files Commission), the Commission chair Metodi Andreev announced on Sunday.

The Commission has already examined the files of all MPs in the 39th Parliament. The Prime Minister Simeon Saxe-Coburg and nine members of his Cabinet have not yet been checked, as they had not run as MPs. Results are expected within a week, said Andreev. After that, the files of deputy ministers, future regional governors, and bank CEOs would be checked.

"We do not expect any surprises among the Cabinet members, but we expect the check of the bank bosses to yield a whole lot of former agents and informers," Andreev said. A very good candidate for the government had been rejected at the last moment due to doubts about their connections with the former state security, said Parliamentary speaker Ognian Gerdjikov, an MP from Saxe-Coburg's National Movement Simeon II (NMSII), on Sunday.

NMSII joined the "Let's continue clean" campaign, initiated by the United Democratic Forces before the parliamentary elections on June 17, which requested the withdrawal of former secret service agents from the elections. The Movement for Rights and Freedoms (MRF), NMSII partner in the government coalition, did not join. MRF leader Ahmed Dogan was found to have links to the services.

Andreev warned on Tuesday that a group of former special services agents in the present Parliament were preparing a media war against the Commission. According to Andreev, imposing a veto on the activities of the Commission would draw Bulgaria into a major international scandal, and would slow down the country's EU and NATO integration. The Commission members even expressed their belief that Bulgaria would not be invited to join NATO unless it opened the archives for public access, and unless it reorganized its special services.

The Bulgarian Files Commission is to co-operate with the German commission dealing with the archives of Stazi, the former East Germany intelligence service, after a memorandum was signed in Berlin last Friday. The document allows the sides to exchange information and expertise, and will facilitate research into the connections between the former secret services of Bulgaria and former East Germany.

According to the German archive officers, the Stazi archives from the 1969-80 period hold 3,800 reports from the Bulgarian secret services. Some of the reports are on political matters and concern Bulgaria's neighbours or German organizations in Bulgaria. The German secret service had sent 1,500 reports to the Bulgarian State Security.

The delegation of the Bulgarian commission could not obtain information about Bulgarian citizens in the Stazi archives. Under German legislation, such information may be disclosed only if the person named in the document requires access to his or her file. The two commissions are preparing a scientific conference on the influence of the communist secret services upon transitional societies, to be held in Bulgaria early next year, Andreev said.