Participation of Bulgaria on a regional level has been confined to a few projects. Among these are a COMECON electric power grid, which serves the western Ukraine, especially the city of Kiev; a Romanian-Bulgarian project to construct a power dam and navigation system for sixty miles along the Danube River; a system of high-speed expressways to connect the capital cities of member countries; a project to modernize steel industries and to reduce production and delivery time; and membership in the International Bank for Economic Cooperation, headed by a former deputy chairman of the Soviet State Bank.
United Nations Membership and Participation
Bulgaria became a member of the UN on December 14, 1955. Its delegates are active in committee work of the UN organs and subsidiary bodies as well as in deliberations on the floor of the General Assembly. One of its most important committee assignments is to the so-called First Committee, which was established as one of the original six committees under the General Assembly's rules of procedure in 1946. It deals with political and security matters and was headed by Milko Tarabanov, one of five Bulgarian delegates to the UN in the session held from September through December 1972.
Available records of General Assembly activities in 1970 showed active participation of Bulgaria's delegates in committee work touching on such matters as the review of administrative tribunal judgments; the question of defining aggression; the peaceful uses of outer space; the peaceful uses of the seabed under international waters; and the implementation of the declaration on the granting of independence to colonial countries and peoples. Bulgaria was particularly interested in the Caribbean territories.
As a member of the Committee on Disarmament, Bulgaria, along with twenty-four other participating states, met in Geneva in 1970. The committee met to consider the question of cessation of the nuclear arms race and associated matters, such as the prohibition of emplacing nuclear arms or other destructive weapons on the seabed. A refinement of the comprehensive test ban treaty of 1963 extended the prohibition on arms control to underground testing. Bulgaria, along with other Eastern European countries, also supported draft proposals of the committee not to undertake the "development, production, and stockpiling of chemical and bacteriological weapons" and the consequent "destruction of such weapons" as well as the prohibition of "biological methods of warfare." Bulgaria, as a member of the General Assembly's First Committee, also cosponsored a resolution to secure guarantees that the seabed would be used only for peaceful means.
In regard to the question of nuclear and thermonuclear testing, Bulgaria sought the early passage of an agreement to prohibit all nuclear weapons testing while the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (SALT) were going on between the United States and the Soviet Union. Bulgaria also participated actively in the Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space. As a member of a subcommittee's working group, proposals and working papers were submitted on the question of liability for damage caused by objects that were launched into outer space. For its part, Bulgaria sought to clarify the "question of applicable law" and the "settlement of disputes."
The country was also represented in bodies dealing with economic questions; questions of development; and social questions involving housing, building, and planning as well as the promotion of children's welfare. Additionally, the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development had Bulgarian delegates in five of its working groups, dealing with trade and development, commodities, domestic shipping, international shipping legislation, and the transfer of technology. Bulgaria is also a member of the Economic Commission for Europe.