Nationalist Ataka Refuses Government Talks With GERB

As expected, the left-nationalist party Ataka refused to have government consultations with the centre-right GERB.

According to the party leader Volen Siderov, the Ataka representatives tried to contact the GERB with a demand for live television broadcast of the negotiations, but did not receive an official response and cancelled the consultations.

"This is our demand and we insist on it, because we don't want to participate in backroom scheming," Siderov said. "I have bad experience with GERB - they lied to me in the face."

During the press conference in the National Assembly building, in front of the TV cameras, Siderov demanded that the staff removes the EU flag and repeated his usual fare of anti-EU and pro-Russian propaganda.

On Friday Siderov told the media he was not going to participate in any talks with GERB, because they were "pure political PR" and demanded that the consultations be televised and open to the media.

Tsetska Tsahceva, head of the GERB negotiations team responded through the Focus agency, that the party does not find it necessary to continue the election campaign - something, which Ataka was actually doing, in GERB's opinion.

"We were expecting our colleagues from Ataka to turn up at 1 PM, as previously announced in our meetings timetable," she said. "We sent our invitations to all parliamentary represented parties well in advance, so every party can state its demands, and provided a contact person. We find unacceptable the Ataka demands to hold the consultations in front of the TV cameras. They are outside our mandate. We cannot allow an extension of the election campaign and we think this is what Ataka is doing right now."