[El Ingenioso Hidalgo]

<H2>Stanishev and Dogan Hold Talks on the New Cabinet

Leader of the Bulgarian Socialist Party (BSP) Sergey Stanishev will not aspire for the post of Prime Minister. The BSP will try to nominate a more neutral and generally acceptable person for the post of PM, it transpired yesterday. BSP Deputy Leaders Rumen Petkov and Rumen Ovcharov held unofficial negotiations with the National Movement Simeon II (NMS) and the Movement for Rights and Freedoms (MRF) early yesterday morning. At about noon it transpired that the NMS would not insist on Simeon Saxe-Coburg-Gotha's assuming the post of Prime Minister. The first name, which the BSP probed for the post of PM, was that of Kostadin Paskalev. Simeon sent messengers to the BSP, who said he was ready to back a BSP Cabinet, led by Paskalev, if he receives the support of the BSP in the upcoming Presidential election and the NMS is granted two of the power ministries. Outgoing PM and NMS Leader Simeon Saxe-Coburg-Gotha has not received yet an official invitation for a start of the political consultations on the formation of a Government, but such consultations are expected to start by the end of this week, Government Spokesman Dimitar Tsonev said. Late yesterday afternoon, BSP Leader Sergey Stanishev said that the consultations of the Left-to-center coalition with the democratic parties had not started yet. He explained that the negotiating team will be selected at today's sitting of the Executive Bureau of the Bulgarian Socialist Party. In the afternoon, Stanishev had talks with MRF Leader Ahmed Dogan on the formation of the Parliament and on the future Cabinet. Their one-to-one meeting lasted over 4 hours. Stanishev promised that the BSP would back an open to consensus and compromises figure for the post of PM, no matter whether or not he belongs to the Left-to-center circles. Since the Election Night onwards, the BSP has been discussing 6 variants of a future Cabinet. Two of them - with Stanishev or Simeon Saxe-Coburg-Gotha on the post of PM - were utterly discarded yesterday. Apart from Paskalev, the Socialists also mention the names of bankers Chavdar Kunchev and Stoyan Alexandrov as possible nominees for the PM post. They are also discussing a broad coalition of the BSP, MRF, NMS and the Bulgarian People's Union (BPU), in which Stefan Sofianski to be granted the post of Deputy PM and Anastasia Moser to assume the post of Parliamentary President.
Rayna Haralampieva
Antoaneta Peteva

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