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Greece, Macedonia Plan Strategy For Name Dispute Talks

RFE/RL January 27, 2018

The prime ministers of Greece and Macedonia are holding talks in their home countries with political leaders to discuss strategy ahead of scheduled meetings next week in an effort to resolve the longstanding dispute over the name "Macedonia."

Greek leader Alexis Tsipras met in Athens with key political leaders on January 27, the same time Macedonia's Zoran Zaev opened talks with his country's key players to discuss the name dispute.

Tsipras failed to get backing from the main opposition leader to build a consensus. "We will not divide Greeks to unite Skopje," Conservative New Democracy party leader Kyriakos Mitsotakis said in a televised address after a meeting with Tsipras.

Meanwhile, in Skopje, Zaev and Macedonian President George Ivanov are discussing the issue with Foreign Minister Nikola Dimitrov, Defense Minister Radmila Sekerinska Jankovska, Deputy Prime Minister for European Affairs Bujar Osmani, as well as heads of the main political parties.

An envoy for the United Nations will then meet with the leaders on January 29 and February 1.

After meeting Tsipras at the Swiss winter resort of Davos on January 24, Zaev announced two moves seen as olive branch offerings to the Greeks.

Zaev said that Skopje's Alexander the Great Airport would be renamed, while a highway leading from his country to Greece would drop a similar moniker and instead be called the Friendship highway.

Macedonia kept its communist-era name after declaring independence from Yugoslavia in 1991. But the move angered Greece, which says it implies territorial claims to a Greek province of the same name as well as to Greece's history.

Intensifying Consultations

Greece has since insisted that the country be referred to internationally as the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia and blocked its path to European Union and NATO membership until a solution to the dispute is found.

Authorities from both Greece and Macedonia have said they want to settle the issue this year and the two sides have agreed to intensify consultations.

UN-mediated talks between the two countries' chief negotiators in New York on January 17 did not produce concrete results, but some name suggestions were put forward for negotiation, according to media reports.

Greece wants Macedonia to change its name -- adding a modifier like "New" or "North" -- to clarify that it has no claim on the neighboring Greek province of Macedonia.

Although the leaders appear to be moving closer to settling the dispute, both face strong opposition to compromise from nationalists in their own countries.

Organizers of an upcoming antigovernment protest in Athens said on January 26 that they hope to draw 1 million people to a rally aimed at stopping Greece and Macedonia reaching a compromise.

Stergios Kalogiros, a senior organizer of the rally scheduled for February 4, said he was optimistic that the Athens event would draw huge crowds after it won endorsements this week from powerful religious and local government organizations.

"To get attendance to reach seven figures is achievable," he said.

Tens of thousands of people took to the streets of the northern Greek city of Thessaloniki in a previous rally on January 21 to show they were against the use of the word "Macedonia" in any solution to the row.

Meanwhile, nationalists in Macedonia have accused Zaev of making concessions without receiving anything in return.

With reporting by RFE/RL's Balkan Service, dpa, and AP

Source: https://www.rferl.org/a/greece-macedonia- name-yugoslavia-zaev/29001377.html

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Greece, Macedonia Plan Strategy For Name Dispute Talks