Extra urgency is needed among officials in the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (FYROM) to resolve the name dispute with Greece, said Greek Foreign Minister Evangelos Venizelos during a visit to Skopje this week.
Venizelos was speaking after talks with the neighbouring country’s Prime Minister Nikola Gruevski, President Gjorge Ivanov and Foreign Minister Nikola Popovski.
Skopje was one of the stops on Venizelos’s tour of the Balkans as part of Greece’s European Union presidency. He said he would invite Popovski to a meeting of European and Western Balkan ministers in Thessaloniki in April.
Popovski expressed displeasure that Venizelos did not join him for statements after their meeting, suggesting this was because the Greek foreign minister did not want to stand in front of a backdrop that read Republic of Macedonia. Venizelos said the decisions of the EU leaders’ summit in December underlined the need for FYROM to maintain good-neighborly relations, not just resolve the name dispute, if it is to join the EU.
Source: ekathimerini
