Bulgaria will most likely quit Iraq at year’s end

SOFIA: US-ally Bulgaria will probably withdraw its light-infantry battalion from Iraq in December, Defence Minister Nikolai Svinarov said on Tuesday. With the approach of June elections, Ex-king Simeon Saxe-Coburg’s government is under rising pressure to bring Bulgaria’s 450 soldiers home from the deeply unpopular mission. Defence officials will discuss a plan on Wednesday, and Svinarov said they would most likely recommend leaving at the end of the year when the soldiers are scheduled to rotate back. “My position is not for a gradual withdrawal, but for pulling out all at once... at the end of this contingent’s period of activity,” he told journalists. The government is expected to back the plan next week, and parliament, which must eventually approve any decision, will vote on it before national elections expected on June 25. A staunch supporter of the US-led military operations in Iraq, Bulgaria has joined ranks of US allies Ukraine, Poland, and Italy in moving to scale down its presence there. reuters

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