Iran, Bulgaria sign three basic agreements

Iran and Bulgarian have signed three basic agreements to promote cooperation in several economic areas.

One concerned promoting cooperation in the area of telecommunications. Another envisaged mutual investments and the last one is meant to help facilitate ties between small and medium-sized enterprises between the two countries, Press TV reported.

The agreements were signed during the visit to Tehran by Bulgaria’s Prime Minister Boyko Borisov who arrived in Tehran on Sunday heading a major economic and diplomatic delegation.

Bulgaria’s media earlier reported that Borisov will discuss a series of issues of mutual interest during his stay in Tehran.

At the top of his discussions will be a plan to sell a nuclear reactor to Iran as well as its related equipment that belonged to an abandoned plant project.

Bulgaria's government said in June it considered the sale of the equipment to a third country jointly with Russia. The reactor and other parts manufactured for Belene Nuclear Power Plant (NPP) are to be received following an arbitration ruling that said Bulgaria was to buy them out for €0.55 billion, Novinite.com reported.

The same news website earlier quoted Abdollah Norouzi, Iran’s ambassador Sofia, as saying that Iran plans to fund the construction of an oil refinery in Bulgaria. Norouzi added that a group of Iranian investors are already looking into the project which he said could make Bulgaria a new refining base for Iran in Europe. The Iranian envoy further emphasized that Tehran and Sofia are also discussing exports of natural gas and oil to Bulgaria – what he suggested may be raised during Borisov’s visit to the Islamic Republic.

Norouzi has also been quoted by the media as saying earlier that Iran and Bulgaria will discuss the development of a trade corridor that could connect the Persian Gulf and the Black Sea. The corridor, he said, would start from the Persian Gulf and will pass through Iran, Armenia, Georgia and the Black Sea to end in Bulgaria. This, the envoy said, will be a strategic project to link Iran to Europe.