Bulgaria says it will ask Greek authorities to hand over a young girl found in a Roma camp this month, who was wrongly thought to have been abducted.
"The state child protection agency will undertake the necessary actions for the return of Maria... who was indisputably proven to be the child of Sasha Ruseva and Atanas Rusev from the town of Nikolaevo," the agency said in a statement on Tuesday.
The four-year-old blonde girl made international headlines when she was found living with a Roma couple - who were not her real parents - in the Greek town of Farsala.
She is currently in the care of Athens-based charity Smile of the Child, which said it was for the Greek authorities to decide where she goes.
The girl was wrongfully thought to be an abducted western European child until her real parents - also Roma - were tracked down in a ghetto in the Bulgarian town of Nikolaevo last week.
DNA tests proved the parentage of Sasha and her husband Atanas, who later admitted abandoning the girl in 2009, just seven months after she was born in Greece.
The mother, who denies she took any money for her daughter, says she wants to take Maria back.
The Greek Roma couple, who are in detention for allegedly abducting Maria, have also said they want to keep her.
However, the girl is unlikely to rejoin her poverty-stricken parents, who have nine other children, if she is sent back to Bulgaria and would instead be placed in a crisis centre or in foster care.
"Maria will remain there until finding a solution for her upbringing - a return to the biological family, or placement with relatives, in foster care or in a social institution," the child protection agency said.
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