Ambassador to Bulgaria Comments on Run-in with Halloran

Bayside Councilman Dan Halloran, R-Whitestone, may have a strange way of making influential friends.

Halloran, who was in Bulgaria all last week on a trip paid for by one of the country’s conservative political parties, blasted U.S. Ambassador to Bulgaria James Warlick, in a speech delivered to 3,000 Bulgarians last Saturday morning.

Warlick and Halloran then bumped into one another in a restaurant in the downtown area of Bulgaria’s capital city, Sofia on Saturday night.

“Sofia is a small town indeed,” said Halloran’s spokesman Steven Stites.

Stites believes that Warlick must have heard the remarks Halloran had made, criticizing what he called Warlick’s “heavy-handed approach to diplomacy.”

Halloran , after meeting and befriending the head of the conservative Peace, Law and Order Party Chairman Yane Yanev, who himself was on a trip to New York earlier in the year.

Warlick’s office in Sofia said the Ambassador and Council Member “had a short and friendly conversation,” even after Halloran accused the Ambassador of meddling in internal Bulgarian affairs.

"It is for the Bulgarians to decide the future of Bulgaria. Not me. Not my ambassador," said Halloran in an address delivered several hours before his chance encounter with the diplomat.

Warlick invited Halloran to stop by the embassy, “for a more detailed discussion on Bulgaria.”

He did not comment on the accusations made in two press releases issued by Halloran after his return to New York, claiming that Warlick had aligned himself with the corrupt elements of Bulgaria’s ruling party.