The draft plan of
Bulgaria
's national security strategy will be ready by the end of May 2010,
general Roumen Milanov, secretary of the Security Council at the Council of
Ministers told a
February 22 2010
round table on
national security issues in
Sofia
.
Once completed, the document will be put to a wide public discussion, Milanov
was quoted by Bulgarian-language Dnevnik daily as saying.
The idea is for
Bulgaria
to have its own national security strategy ready by autumn of 2010 when NATO is
expected to come forward with its own security strategy.
That way, if some serious differences exist between the two documents, the
Bulgarian one could be updated.
According to Milanov, the national strategy would not concentrate solely on
matters of internal security and defence, but would also embrace energy issues
and the economy.
The document had to be no more than 15 pages because it was just a framework
paper, Milanov also said.
Prime Minister Boyko Borissov ordered work on the strategy to begin at the end
of 2009 but its start was delayed because every sector had to present its own
security strategy for incorporation in the final document. One such strategy -
to cite but one instance - was a view on what energy
Bulgaria
planned to develop, one based on nuclear or water energy, for example.
The document will not be obligatory. The previous government had also worked on
such a strategy in 2008 but it had never adopted it, Milanov said, and noted that
parts of it were used in the work of the new national security strategy.
As Dnevnik recalls, a concept for national security was adopted in 1998 by the
then government of Ivan Kostov that prioritised
Bulgaria
's accession to the European Union and NATO.
After
Bulgaria
joined NATO in 2004, and the EU in 2007, these goals were fulfilled.