Bulgaria has reached a debt rescheduling deal for 250 million euros ($326 million) owed to creditors headed by French bank BNP Paribas for an abandoned nuclear plant project, Economy and Energy Minister Delyan Dobrev said on Monday.

"Between 50 and 70 million euros will be paid now... the repayment deadline for the rest of the sum will be rescheduled by one year," Dobrev told journalists.

BNP Paribas was chosen in April 2008 to lead the raising and management of about 250 million euros of funds for the construction by Russian company Atomstroyexport of a new nuclear power plant at Belene, in northern Bulgaria.

The government recently announced it was dropping plans to build the plant for lack of funding.

But the country's National Electricity Company (NEK) was still due to repay the BNP Paribas-led credit at the end of May. The money has been spent for pre-construction activities at the plant.

NEK will now repay 55 million euros to two banks -- Belgian Dexia and Japanese Mizuho -- which refused the rescheduling and postponement of payment of the rest of the money by a year, Dobrev said.

Bulgaria planned to build two 1,000 megawatt reactors at the new Belene plant to compensate for lost capacity after the shutting of four smaller reactors at its sole nuclear facility at Kozloduy on the eve of its EU accession in 2007.

But the project became bogged down in financial difficulties, the inability to find a strategic western investor and price-haggling with the Russian side, which prompted the government to drop it altogether in late March.

The small Balkan country, which is EU's poorest newcomer, has so far managed to keep its thinning finances in check but is facing the important repayment of about 818 million euros of sovereign debt maturing in January 2013.