The International Herald Tribune, Wednesday September 5, based on AP report.

A special panel investigating Bulgaria's communist-era police files announced Tuesday that the country's president, a coalition party head and 19 current parliamentarians all once collaborated with the secret services.

President Georgi Parvanov figures on the list, as does Ahmed Dogan, a junior partner in the governing coalition who represents Bulgaria's sizable Turkish minority. Nineteen currently sit in parliament — out of 240 total members — while 23 others have held high positions under Parvanov or previous heads of state.

The panel began its work in April, following a law passed in late 2006 forcing open the pre-1989 communist-era secret service archives. The list of collaborators — 138 in all, out of 1794 total names checked — was published on the panel's website.

One of the panel's first acts was to expose Parvanov, 50, a communist historian who has been president since Jan. 2002 and was re-elected last year, as a collaborator. His name appears again in today's list as he is a former member of parliament.

Parvanov has denied being an informer, saying he only wrote a book review for a man who turned out to be a secret services officer. However, the political opposition claims that many files in the president's dossier are missing and were destroyed on his orders.

The commission is expected eventually to open the files of all key public figures including politicians, senior officials, judges and prominent journalists. The legislation does not stipulate any punishment for those caught out, but the panelists believe their work will still help heal past national wounds.

"We expect the revelations to have a healing effect on society, though a belated one," said Ekaterina Boncheva, one of the panel's six members.

She added that apart from Albania, Bulgaria was the last of the ex-communist countries to make public secret archives connected with its past.