Survey: Serbs and Macedonians Most Friendly

The research, conducted by twenty five Serbian sociologists on a sample of 1750 people from Nis, Skopje and Plovdiv, aimed to find out basic relations among Serbs, Macedonians and Bulgarians.

Regarding friendships, 89.6 per cent of Serbs would become friends with Macedonians while 77 of the respondents in Skopje said they would have a Serb as a friend.

Macedonians are the most tolerant among the three Balkan nations when it comes to relations with Albanians - 28.2 per cent of them would marry an Albanian, while 7.9 per cent of the Bulgarian and 15. 2 per cent of Serbian respondents would marry an Albanian.

Additionally, Bulgarians would rather be married to a Macedonian (36.1 per cent) than to a Serb (26 per cent).

According to the research, positive answers exceed 50 per cent when questions involve a smaller degree of intimacy. Therefore, 55.4 per cent of the Serbian respondents would cooperate with Albanians at work while 58.1 per cent would live in the same city and 59.2 would live in the same state with Albanians.

A large majority of the respondents, 80.1 per cent, believe that the culprits behind conflict in the Balkans are foreign powers, 76.2 believe the political elite is to blame and 61.6 per cent fault nationalism of the Balkan people.