Croatia, Serbia invited to join Belene

08 November 2010

Bulgarian prime minister Bokyo Borisov has invited Serbia and Croatia to become minority participants in the Belene nuclear power plant project. He informed Bulgarian ministers that he had written to Serbian president Boris Tadic and Croatian prime minister Jadranka Kosor offering them stakes of 1%, 1.5% or 2% in the project to build two Russian-designed VVER-1000 pressurised water reactors at the site. Borisov told ministers that the involvement of the two countries would help to guarantee the market for the plant's future output. He said he was hoping to receive responses by 13 November, when Russian prime minister Vladimir Putin arrives in Sofia for high-level talks.