BULGARlA's ruling Socialists yesterday threatened a tougher response to opposition rallies, saying provincial party organisations had urged the party leadership to organise counter-rallies.
"They insist that we must have a tougher approach against the pressure of the opposition. Our local organisations also want to organise counter-rallies to respond to the opposition protest rallies," Mr Vassil Karinov, a member of the party executive bureau, said.
Mr Karinov's remarks came as Bulgaria's daily protests entered their third week.
Counter-rallies by supporters of President Slobodan Milosevic in neighbouring Serbia led to violent clashes in Belgrade between demonstrators and riot police on December 24th.
Mr Karinov said the Bulgarian Socialist Party was sticking to its insistence on forming a new government until general elections at the end of the year, and planned to introduce emergency economic measures in the next few weeks, including rescheduling the country's huge domestic debt.
"We think that immediate elections for Bulgaria are not the best alternative for the country because we need a tough restrictive regime even before a currency board system is introduced," he said.
The main opposition Union of Democratic Forces, which wants elections as soon as possible, also presented an economic programme, saying that if elections were held in March, a currency board fixed exchange rate regime could be introduced as early as May.
Meanwhile, Bulgaria's former Communist leader, Mr Todor Zhivkov, remains under house arrest on separate charges after the Sofia civil prosecutor ordered him freed in an embezzlement case, the military prosecutor said yesterday.
The Sofia prosecutor freed Mr Zhivkov on Monday in connection with embezzlement charges. But Mr Zhivkov, who ruled Bulgaria for 35 years until 1989, remains under house arrest on separate charges for his assimilation policy against ethnic Turks.
"Under my case he is under house arrest," the military prosecutor, Mr Valery Parvanov, said.
Mr Zhivkov was charged in 1992 with discrimination for forcing ethnic Turks to change their Islamic names for Bulgarian ones and with curbing their religious and cultural practices.
Mr Parvanov said the case had not been brought to trial and declined to comment on why Mr Zhivkov (85) was still being held.