Bulgarian President Georgy Parvanov Thursday held talks with his Azerbaijani counterpart Ilham Aliev on a planned gas supply agreement and a European Union-backed pipeline project, Parvanov's office said.
Last year, Sofia and Baku signed a letter of intent on the supply of 1 billion cubic meters of Azerbaijani gas annually.
The gas is to come either via the planned Nabucco pipeline that will pump gas from the Caspian Sea to Europe, or by linking Bulgaria to the planned Turkey-Greece-Italy pipeline.
At their meeting Thursday, Parvanov and Aliev called for their state-run gas companies Bulgargaz and SOCAR to enter into the next stage of negotiations as soon as possible, Parvanov's office said in a statement.
They called for "increased political efforts" to speed up the slow-moving Nabucco project.
The 3,400-kilometer pipeline between Turkey and Austria is intended to transport up to 31 bcm of gas each year from the Caspian Sea to western Europe.
But the six participating countries have yet to agree on a number of key aspects.
Parvanov's visit to Azerbaijan comes two days after the end of a pricing row between Moscow and Kiev which left Bulgaria without crucial supplies of Russian gas for around two weeks.