Bulgaria Official Quits in Storm Over Nazi Salute

Just two days after he was appointed, Bulgaria's new deputy regional development minister, Pavel Tenev, has resigned after media got hold of a picture from his Facebook profile, showing him giving a Nazi salute to figures of Nazi soldiers in the Grevin museum in Paris nine years ago.

On Wednesday, the government press service announced that Boyko Borissov, Prime Minister and head of the coalition government uniting his centre-right GERB party and the nationalist United Patriots union, had accepted Tenev's resignation.

Tenev was not the only minister to cause a furor. Asked about Tenev - who comes from the nationalists' quota in cabinet - Valeri Simeonov, vice-president of the United Patriots and Bulgaria's Deputy Prime Minister, reportedly told Sega newspaper on Tuesday that the stunt was not to be taken seriously.

The newspaper reported him recalling how he himself had fooled around in the 1970s when he was taken as a student to the Nazi concentration camp in Buchenwald.  "Who knows what gag photos we made there," Simeonov reportedly told the journalist.

Simeonov has since denied talking to the newspaper and has threatened to sue it, however.

When BIRN on Wednesday asked him to comment on his statement, which had outraged among many Bulgarians, Simeonov in a telephone conversation denied having spoken to "Sega" at all on Tuesday. "This is lie, this has to be disproven," Simeonov said, pledging to take the newspaper to court for defamation.

Sega's editorial team told BIRN that it stood behind the journalist, who "did his job completely professionally" and spoke to Simeonov twice on the phone - on the record.

Both Tenev's picture and the statement that Simeonov later denied drew shocked reactions from the opposition, from...