Macedonia's Gruevski, Gordon Meet in Zagreb

Details from the meeting were not revealed.

The meting was originally scheduled to take place in Skopje, where Gordon arrived on Thursday. But Gruevski changed his plans following an official trip to Marocco and decided to land Zagreb rather than Skopje.  

His cabinet told media that Gruevski was advised not to land in Skopje due to bad whether concerns but some local media suspected he was trying to avoid meeting the high ranking US guest and discussing the hot topic of the Athens Skopje name dispute.

While in Skopje Gordon met with Macedonian President Georgi Ivanov and with heads of several political parties. He said the US strongly supports the process of a name row settlement with Greece.

“The name issue is key for unblocking the Euro-Atlantic integration processes of Macedonia,” he stressed hoping that a solution to the spat will be found soon. “When this is going to happen, the United States will be a strong supporter of the reached agreement”.

He hinted that the US hopes a settlement could be reached within the next few months.

Since 2008 Athens has been effectively blocking Skopje’s entry in to NATO arguing that Skopje’s official name, Republic of Macedonia, implies territorial claims against its own northern province which is also called Macedonia.

In December the same blockade was imposed on Skopje’s bid to gain a start date for its EU accession talks.

The efforts that are being made to solve the spat under the UN auspices have so far been in vain.