Bulgarian Communists Agree to Share Power

In a bid to placate growing public anger at delayed political reforms, Bulgaria’s Communist leadership pledged today to end the party’s monopoly on power within a month and agreed to begin round-table talks with the opposition next week.

Leading activist Konstantin Trenchev said Prime Minister Georgi Atanasov and Politburo member Andrei Lukanov met at lunch with opposition leaders, including philosopher Zhelu Zhelev, head of the Union of Democratic Forces opposition umbrella group.

Trenchev, leader of the unofficial union Podkrepa, said the two sides agreed to begin talks next week.

In the evening, thousands of people took to the streets of Sofia for a second straight day. The crowd, which had intended to join a pro-democracy rally outside Parliament, split into groups around the city center.

About 2,000 jeering demonstrators marched to state television headquarters to protest that coverage of a rally outside Parliament on Thursday had presented the crowd as extremists.

“We are not extremists, we are the people!” they shouted.

They dispersed after television spokesman Filip Bokov promised to broadcast coverage of their protest and to comment on it personally later in the evening.

Parliament, shaken by a mass show of public impatience as it met Thursday night, passed a declaration promising to scrap the Communist Party’s constitutional right to rule at its next session in January.

“Parliament . . . values this as an important step on the way to solidifying political pluralism and the development of a democratic state,” the unanimous declaration said.

The declaration, made early this morning, was aimed at heading off a repetition of protests on Thursday, when 50,000 jeering Bulgarians thronged outside Parliament to demand the immediate repeal of the constitutional clause enshrining the party’s leading role.

Earlier, Parliament had postponed discussion of the article, arguing that the constitution cannot be changed without at least one month’s notice.

As Parliament met again today, police cordoned off the square outside where protesters had jeered and booed new leader Petar Mladenov the previous evening when he came out in an attempt to pacify them.