Macedonia Disbands Encyclopaedia Team

The general assembly of Macedonian Academy of Science and Arts, MANU decided late Thursday to fully withdraw the controversial Macedonian Encyclopaedia and disband the editing team that made it.

“MANU distances itself from some qualifications and personal stands of the authors,” Academic Vlado Kambovski told press on Thursday evening after a four-hour session.

MANU will form a fresh editorial team to start preparing a new encyclopaedia, and will give special attention that leading scientists with ethnic Albanian background are included in it, the Academy said.

The book, promoted in mid-September, draw flak among the local Albanian minority and disturbed Government relations. The edition referred to them as to “settlers” who are also known as “Shiptari”, a derogatory term.

The country’s Albanians who make one quarter of the overall population conceder themselves as indigenous in Macedonia as the Macedonian majority.

Ristovski claims the book was all right

Furthermore, the book caused a series of criticism from neighboring Kosovo and Albania as well as from the western countries who argued that it undermines the country's ethnic cohesion.

The editor in-chief of the encyclopaedia, Blaze Ristovski, said MANU can make a new encyclopedia, but won’t be using the materials of the first one, because it has its author rights protected.

In late September MANU said it will correct the problematic passages, but the majority of Albanians said this was not enough, demanding full withdrawal of the book and responsibility from Ristovski and his team.