THE man in charge of Bulgaria’s communist secret police files has been found dead at his desk in an apparent suicide. But the two-day delay in announcing his death drew charges yesterday of a secret service cover-up.

Bozhidar Doychev, the head of the National Intelligence Service archives, was found dead on Wednesday, having apparently killed himself for what prosecutors said were probably personal rather than work- related reasons.

Opposition legislators demanded an explanation for the delay in announcing Mr Doychev’s death and accused the secret service of a cover-up, noting that new legislation is in the works aimed at throwing light on murky corners of Bulgaria’s communist past.

Bulgaria’s now defunct Darzhavna Sigurnost was one of the Cold War’s most notorious spy networks, and the files may contain the answers to some of the era’s unsolved mysteries. The network was implicated in plots ranging from the assassination attempt on Pope John Paul II to the poison umbrella murder of the dissident Georgi Markov in London.

“We were shocked by the fact that the death of such a senior intelligence officer was kept secret by the authorities,” said Vesselin Metodiev, of Democrats for a Strong Bulgaria. “There is a very unpleasant coincidence between this incident and a new law on the files.”

The party called on President Parvanov to remove the head of the secret service and said that the parliamentary commission overseeing the secret services should take over the archive.

The files are a highly sensitive issue in the Balkan state, which was the Kremlin’s most obedient subject during the East-West confrontation of the Cold War era.

Since the collapse of communism, Bulgaria has been the slowest of Moscow’s former allies to throw light on its secret agents. Rights groups say that the failure to open the files has allowed former spies to take posts in politics and business.

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