Report: Rising Expectations of Hizbullah Involvement in Bulgaria Suicide Attack

Expectations are rising that Bulgarian officials will confirm on Tuesday a link between Hizbullah and a suicide attack in Bulgaria that left five Israeli tourists dead in July last year, the New York Times reported.

A spokesman for the Bulgarian president’s office, Veselin Ninov, said that Interior Minister Tsvetan Tsvetanov, was expected to “announce the results of the interim progress report in the investigation of the Burgas attack” on Tuesday.

The announcement would be made after the meeting of the president’s council for national security, which includes the prime minister, top cabinet members and military and security personnel.

Ninov would not say whether responsibility for those behind the bombing or their identities would be revealed.

The interior minister said in October that the bomber, who blew up a bus on July 18, 2012 killing five Israeli tourists and their Bulgarian driver, had up to five foreign helpers locally and the attack was planned abroad.

Tsvetanov said the attack at Burgas airport was plotted outside Bulgaria over a period of a year and a half.

The announcement of the investigation on Tuesday could have wide-reaching repercussions for Europe’s uneasy détente with Hizbullah, said the New York Times.

It quoted experts as saying that determination that Hizbullah was involved would force the European Union to reconsider whether to designate the group a terrorist organization, as the United States and Israel have urged.

Omid Nouripour, a member of Germany's Bundestag and a Green Party spokesman on security issues, said that for years he had opposed banning the Lebanese party.

“In the situation now, with Syria, I think it’s now time to isolate Hizbullah,” he told the newspaper.

But France remains the EU country with the strongest engagement in Lebanon as well as in Syria, and with the most say in European policy toward Hizbullah, said François Heisbourg, special adviser to the Foundation for Strategic Research in Paris.

“The French, to the extent that it’s possible, try to avoid political destabilization and radicalization in Lebanon,” he said.

The Netherlands has already declared Hizbullah a terrorist organization. Britain lists only the group’s militant wing as a terrorist organization, distinguishing it from the political side.