Bulgaria, Greece open new border checkpoint

(IVAILOVGRAD) - Bulgaria and Greece opened a new border checkpoint Thursday in the Rhodope mountains, a region that used to be one of the most heavily guarded areas of the Iron Curtain during communism.

Bulgarian President Georgy Parvanov and his Greek counterpart Karolos Papoulias personally inaugurated the new crossing point linking the southern Bulgarian town of Ivailovgrad to Kiprinos in northeastern Greece.

"A dream has come true -- our region has its European road," Ivailovgrad mayor Stefan Panov cheered.

The region near the town was one of the most guarded stretches of the Bulgarian-Greek border during communism, with several thousand troops stationed there to prevent any escapes over the frontier to Greece.

Special permission was needed in order to enter Ivailovgrad and electric barbed wire fences ran along the border.

Up until 2005, the 300-kilometre (186-mile) border between Bulgaria and Greece could only be crossed at one checkpoint to the west, Kulata-Promahonas.

But three new checkpoints have since been opened and three more are being built to improve the links between the two countries.

"We want to satisfy the need, of people on both sides of the border, to communicate more easily," Papoulias said.

Parvanov meanwhile hailed the new crossing as "a symbol of the new European quality of Bulgarian-Greek relations."

Bulgaria, which joined the European Union in 2007, hopes to join the Schengen free travel zone in March 2011.

Papoulias also expressed hopes on Thursday that Bulgaria and Greece would move ahead with another common project for a 280-kilometre pipeline linking Bulgaria's Black Sea port of Burgas to Alexandroupolis in Greece.

Bulgaria has expressed doubts about the economic feasibility and environmental impact of the Russia-backed pipeline to carry oil from the Caspian Sea to Europe, avoiding the busy Bosphorus strait, while Greece has firmly backed it.