Macedonia: Envoy Denies EU Membership Claim

His comments on Monday, expressed in an unusually direct manner, came after Macedonian President Gjorge Ivanov and PM Nikola Gruevski said earlier this month Macedonia's membership had been turned down.

“I have to say that anybody who suggests that such an option existed in 1995 is really stretching the imagination,” Fouere told local media on Monday.

“... it was a time when just Sweden and Finland joined the EU and we had not even started negotiations with all the countries who joined in 2004 - in 1995 there were not even diplomatic relations,” he added.

First Ivanov and last week Gruevski accused the opposition leader, Branko Crvenkovski of the Social Democrats, who was prime minister in 1995, of declining a proposal for the country to enter the EU under the provisional UN name of the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, FYROM.

Gruevski claimed Crvenkovski’s government had turned down the offer in order to concentrate on dubious privatisation processes taking place in Macedonia at the time.

Both had suggested they got the information from German MEPs.

German MEP Doris Pack, who was mentioned by Ivanov as being one source, denied the allegations.

However, German MEP Bernd Posselt last week told local media he backed the claims.

The Social Democrats have denied the allegations against their leader, saying Gruevski and Ivanov were trying to divert attention from their current inability to solve the name spat with Greece which would unblock the country’s efforts to join the EU and NATO.

The “name” spat with neighbouring Greece has run for nearly two decades, leading to Athens refusing to grant Macedonia entry to NATO in 2008 and blocking the launch of EU accession talks last autumn.

Athens claims that Skopje’s official name, the Republic of Macedonia, suggests territorial claims towards its own northern province, also called Macedonia.

UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said at a press conference in New York on Monday that he would continue supporting a “harmonised solution” to the name dispute.

More negotiations on the issue are expected later this month at the UN General Assembly in New York, where delegations from both countries are to meet UN name mediator Matthew Nimetz and possibly hold joint meetings.