Word: sofia
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...pieced together the details of the alleged plot to kill Walesa. In addition to naming Agca and the three Bulgarian officials implicated in the papal shooting, Imposimato issued official warnings last week to Scricciolo, Ivan Donchev, a former second secretary at the Bulgarian embassy who is now in Sofia, and Salvatore Scordo, a former union employee in the same union as Scricciolo. The seven alleged conspirators reportedly concluded that a shooting attempt was too risky, and decided instead to explode a bomb in Walesa's hotel room or in a nearby parked car. The resulting blast in downtown Rome...
...Washington, Correspondent Ross H. Munro canvassed the intelligence community and pored over the Soviet press. Rome Bureau Chief Wilton Wynn went to Turkey to assess "the amazing Bulgarian involvement in arms and drugs, and Bulgarian activities aimed at destabilizing Turkey." Eastern Europe Bureau Chief Richard Hornik traveled to Sofia, Bulgaria's capital, and gained a different perspective. "The country has been in the news because of an assassination plot," Hornik says. "But with its ancient culture, beautiful scenery and relatively prosperous economy, Bulgaria is in itself a subject worthy of separate journalistic analysis...
...square just off Sofia's Ruski Boulevard facing the National Assembly stands a statue of Tsar Alexander II, ruler of Russia from 1855 to 1881. A prerevolutionary Tsar being honored in a Communist country? History provides the explanation: Alexander II freed the Bulgarians from five centuries of Turkish rule in 1878, at a cost of 200,000 Russian lives. Unlike most of Eastern Europe, Bulgaria regards the U.S.S.R. as its liberator, not its conqueror. The two countries share the Cyrillic alphabet and speak similar languages. Though it is difficult to measure the affection felt by the Bulgarian people toward...
Given its reputation for Balkan intrigue, the country itself strikes visitors as remarkably serene. In Sofia, a charming if somewhat dowdy city of more than 1 million, main boulevards are lined with massive public edifices, and cobbled side streets are crammed with quaint but tumble-down houses of stucco and red tile. Although policemen can be seen directing traffic, the uniformed squadrons that patrol some other Soviet-bloc capitals are absent; if the police are out of sight, they can nonetheless appear on the scene when necessary. The coast along the Black Sea is dotted with hotels built to attract...
After leaving Sofia in August 1980, Agca traveled freely throughout Western Europe, stopping several times in Rome. He claimed to have met three Bulgarians during these visits, including Sergei Ivanov Antonov, the head of the local office of Bulgaria's Balkan Airlines. With this trio, Agca said, he made final plans to murder the Pope...