SOFIA -- Leaked documents of a back-and-forth between Sofia and its UN envoy have sparked accusations that caretaker Prime Minister Dimitar Glavchev succumbed to “external pressure” over a widely followed UN vote in an effort to appease neighboring Serbia or Russia.
The correspondence between Glavchev and Bulgarian Ambassador to the United Nations Lachezara Stoeva suggests that Glavchev instructed Stoeva hours before the May 23 vote to abstain on a resolution to declare an international day of remembrance for the Srebrenica genocide.
Opposition or abstention would have marked a sharp departure in policy by Bulgaria, which co-sponsored the resolution, which was co-authored by Stoeva.
Stoeva voted for the measure on Bulgaria’s behalf, along with 83 other countries, versus 19 nays and 68 abstentions on a resolution that Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic called “highly politicized.”
Documents published on May 29 by the Bureau of Investigative Reporting and Data (BIRD), which is run by a French NGO founded by a Bulgarian investigative journalist, included a purported letter to Stoeva moments before the planned vote telling her to abstain because of the “tense situation” around it.
They also include a four-page response purportedly from Stoeva arguing such a move would be an “extreme act that could only be explained by external pressure and would wreak heavy damage to Bulgaria’s image within the international community.” The author goes on to say such an action is “contrary to the Euro-Atlantic values we uphold” and suggests “the only possible conclusion” would be that Russia or Serbia pressured Bulgaria into the about-face.
Glavchev, who is now an independent, became caretaker prime minister in April for the run-up to voting on June 9, Bulgaria’s sixth parliamentary elections since April 2021.
The Bulgarian government issued a statement on May 30 saying the leaked documents were “only part of the decision-making process and do not represent its entirety.” The letter circulated to the UN envoy it included was authentic, it said, but “does not contain the final instructions to Ambassador Lachezara Stoeva.”
It called the leak “an element of a hybrid attack” in the context of an election campaign and said it “harms the interests of Bulgaria.”
BIRD suggested Glavchev was influenced by a conversation between Vucic and former Bulgarian Prime Minister Boyko Borisov, who heads the GERB party that used to include Glavchev.
Having unsuccessfully argued against adoption of the resolution in the UN hall in New York on May 23, Vucic said after passage that “I was hoping for a surprise from Bulgaria. Five minutes before the meeting, I was convinced that Bulgaria would vote ‘abstain.’”
Passage of the resolution created International Day of Reflection and Commemoration of the 1995 Genocide in Srebrenica, where more than 8,000 Muslim men and boys were killed by Bosnian Serb forces in what is now a mainly Serb region of Bosnia-Herzegovina.
The resolution makes no mention of the Bosnian Serbs who committed the massacre after UN peacekeepers abandoned a declared “safe area” amid a bloody conflict further marred by widespread ethnic cleansing, or of Serbia.
Vucic has called what happened at Srebrenica a “tragedy” but says lives were lost on both sides and rejects the characterization of a genocide, a position shared by Moscow.
The appeals chamber for the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY), as well as the International Court of Justice (ICJ), have called the mass killings at Srebrenica a genocide.
A May 22 report in the independent news website Dnevnik asserted that Serbia was using unofficial channels to seek a change in Bulgaria’s position on the resolution.
Former Bulgarian envoy to the UN Stefan Tafrov, who is running on the We Continue The Change-Democratic Bulgaria ticket for the European Parliament, warned later the same day on social media that “Glavchev should not give in to Serbian pressure.”
