A Bulgarian historical commission announced on Thursday that President Georgi Parvanov had collaborated with the secret police under communism -- a suggestion he has previously denied, the media informs quoting Reuters.

The commission, set up to shed light on Bulgaria's communist past, said on its Web site that Parvanov had been recruited as a collaborator to the much-feared Darzavna Sigurnost on Oct. 4, 1989, a month before the communist regime collapsed.

It provided no further details, but the announcement, even if substantiated, is unlikely to be more than a minor embarrassment for Parvanov, who was re-elected by a landslide last October.

The commission has no power to punish those found to have concealed participation in the communist apparatus of repression, and Bulgarians take it for granted that most members of the political elite may have collaborated at some point.

Bulgaria, the most compliant of Moscow's communist satellites, has been slower than others in the former Soviet bloc to investigate the workings of the secret police, and began doing so only this year after joining the European Union.

Parvanov, now 50, was a young academic in the Bulgarian Communist Party's Historical Institute at the time of the incident in question.

He said last year that he had written a book review for a man who later turned out to be an agent, but denied ever having collaborated with the secret police.

His office said on Thursday that Parvanov had nothing to add, but had asked the commission to pass him the files so that he could publish them on the presidency's website.

The commission -- formally the Commission for Opening the Files of the former Communist Secret Police -- also said some 20 other officials who had worked for the president's office since 1990 had been collaborators in communist repression.

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