Report: Government Spins Media Over “Name”

Brussels

The European Commission chief Jose Manuel Barroso will convene with Macedonia’s Prime Minister on 2 December to tell him that he has until the 7 December EU Council meeting to agree on a new name for his country with Greece, A1 TV reported.

If this does not happen, the EU plans to seriously cool down relations with Skopje, the source said.

Local media previously cited unnamed Macedonian government sources saying that Greece stepped up its demands at last week’s name talks in New York and that the negotiation process has been seriously hampered.

According to reports, the Greek negotiator, Adamantios Vassilakis delivered a list of steep demands to the UN mediator Matthew Nimetz last Thursday,  that included insisting that its neighbor’s name be changed in to Republic of Northern Macedonia for full international use, as well as the insistence that its nationals be called Northern Macedonian, rather than Macedonian.

In addition, media said that Vassilakis insisted that the current use of the name Macedonia for commercial purposes is unacceptable and that the international code MK, as well as the Internet domain .mk. should also be changed.

Macedonia has so far made unprecedented concessions and no one can blame it for not cooperating, Macedonian President Georgi Ivanov said Wednesday during his honorary lecture at the Macedonia based University of South Eastern Europe.

“We have accepted some proposals that are unprecedented in history but stumbled upon a steep change in Greece’s course,” Ivanov told students.

But Greek acting Foreign Minister Dimitris Droutsas on Wednesday rebuffed the claims that Greece has taken a unyielding position.

“We do not want the people of the country [Macedonia] to hear only what their government tells them. We want to remind them of the support that we provided for them in the past, including in the economic sector," the minister said, Greek ANA MPA news agency reported.

Athens “is open-minded, everything is on the table," he added.

Last year Athens blocked Skopje’s NATO accession over the row. Athens insists that Skopje’s constitutional name, the Republic of Macedonia, implies territorial claims towards its own northern province which is also called Macedonia.

Athens now threatens a new blockade for Skopje, this time at the 7 December EU Council meeting where Skopje hopes to get a date for the start of its EU accession talks. The blockade can be avoided only with a breakthrough at the UN name talks, Athens says.