Skopje Lobbies for Euro-Atlantic Accession

Ahmeti, who leads the ethnic Albanian Democratic Union for Integration, DUI, is scheduled to travel to Brussels from October 6 to 8 to lobby for a start date for Macedonia's EU accession talks.

“Ahmeti will try to capitalize on his personal contacts to help the country,” the party said in a statement. He will meet with EU Enlargement Commissioner Stefan Fuele, Slovenian MEP Zoran Thaler, and with other senior EU and NATO officials.

The European Commission is to publish its report on Macedonia in November, but it is still uncertain whether the report will again recommend a start to accession talks.

Last year the Commission recommended that accession talks begin, but Greece blocked the EU ministers from extending a start date pending a solution to the Athens-Skopje name spat.

Athens and Skopje have been locked in the dispute over the use of the name Macedonia for almost two decades.

Greece insists that Skopje’s official name, the Republic of Macedonia, implies territorial claims against its own northern province, also called Macedonia.

Top Macedonian officials have recently suggested that the Slovenian-Croatian model be used in an effort to unblock Macedonia's integration into the Euro-Atlantic community. After years of fruitless negotiations, Zagreb and Ljubljana handed over their dispute over sea and land borders to an international arbitration committee, and agreed that the committee's ruling would be binding on both countries.

The agreement has allowed Croatia to continue with its EU accession process.

It is unlikely that this model will receive the endorsement of the Greek government, which has insisted that the name dispute be resolved before it will support accession talks for Skopje.

Nevertheless, during his visit to Italy this week Macedonian President Gjorge Ivanov pushed for the model, which the government suggests could allow Skopje to start EU accession talks and in parallel solve the name spat with Greece.

Macedonian Foreign Minister Antonio Milososki also voiced his support for the model during his visit to Germany, while Defense Minister Zoran Konjanovski, on a visit to the United States, said that this approach could help the county enter NATO as well.

However, NATO chief Anders Fogh Rassmusen commented that it is highly unlikely that Macedonia will receive a membership invitation at the NATO summit this autumn if the name issue has not been resolved.