Sofia, February 4 (BTA) – Bulgarian Foreign Minister Teodora Genchovska is leading is an official delegation that will be visiting Skopje Friday for a joint commemoration of the 150th birth anniversary of freedom fighter Gotse Delchev.

On the delegation are also Deputy Minister Velislava Petrova and the chair of the parliamentary media committee, Toshko Yordanov. They will pay floral tributes at the grave of Gotse Delchev in Skopje.

North MacedoniaТs government will be represented by Culture Minister Bisera Kostadinova and Deputy Foreign Minister Fatmire Isaki.

Later in the day the Bulgarian officials will attend the official opening of a BTA press club in the capital of North Macedonia.

In Sofia, the power-sharing There Is Such a People (TISP) and the formerly ruling GERB-UDF issued declarations on Gotse Delchev's anniversary. TISP said that Gotse Delchev is "both countries' hero" and there should be no questioning it, and call for thinking "wha unites us rather than how many things divide us". TISP also said that they support fully the approach and effort of the government to achieve new dynamics in relations with Skopje. "We are convinced that active cooperation in the economy, culture, sport and purely interpersonal relations are to the benefit of the two countries," the declaration says. "TISP does not question the right of North Macedonia to identify itself as it chooses but we do not support the determined distortion of history," the declaration goes on to say, calling also for implementation of the Goodneighbourliness Treaty that the two countries signed in 2017.

The GERB declaration describe Gotse Delchev as "a big political leader, revolutionary and fighter for the freedom of Bulgarians in Edirne Thrace" and says that "a society that falsifies history is not and cannot be part of the European family of shared values". It recalls the handover of Gotse Delchev's remains to the Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia by the community government in Bulgaria after 1944, and says that the hero "turned into a pillar for the newly established Macedonian identity as in the process the political heritage was purposefully falsified - and that continues to date". GERB further point out that paying tribute at Gotse Delchev's grave in Skopje has invariably been on the agenda of the official Bulgarian delegations visiting Skopje with Prime Minister Kiril Petkov being the sole exception. LN///