UPDATE - Bulgarian parties agree to form coalition government

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By Burak Bir and Ahmet Gencturk

LONDON/ATHENS (AA) - The two largest alliances in Bulgaria agreed Monday to form a coalition government in a bid to end a political deadlock, according to local media.

The GERB-UDF coalition and We Continue the Change - Democratic Bulgaria (PP-DB) bloc also agreed to a government with a prime minister and deputy prime minister on a rotating basis, the state-run BTA news agency reported.

According to the deal, PP-DB’s Nikolai Denkov and GERB-UDF's Mariya Gabriel will be prime minister for nine months each in the rotational coalition government.

Denkov, Bulgaria's former education minister, is expected to be given the mandate to form the government and will be prime minister for the first nine months.

In the meantime, Gabriel, former European Commissioner for Innovation, Research, Culture, Education and Youth, will be the deputy prime minister and foreign minister.

The first attempt to form a new government following April 2 elections in Bulgaria failed as Gabriel returned the mandate to President Rumen Radev.

Last week, the Continue the Change and Democratic Bulgaria (CC-DB) alliance, Bulgarian Socialist Party (BSP), Revival (Vazrazhdane) party and There Is Such a People party announced that they would not support a GERB-UDF government on the first mandate.

Only the Movement for Rights and Freedoms, supported predominantly by the country’s Turkish minority, expressed readiness to support Gabriel's draft Cabinet list.

In the April 2 elections, GERB-UDF came in first, winning 69 seats in the 240-seat parliament, while the bloc led by We Continue to Change won 64 seats.

The Turkish minority’s Movement for Rights and Freedoms party finished fourth with 13.1% in the country's fifth election in two years.