Macedonian Press: Bulgaria Backs Greece in Name Dispute

The foreign ministers of Greece, Bulgaria and Serbia - Droutsas, Mladenov and Jeremic - are seen in Macedonia as "the three musketeers" and "three hungry wolves" wishing to partition Macedonia. Photo by BGNES

Bulgaria's Foreign Minister Nikolay Mladenov has backed his Greek counterpart in the notorious dispute for the name of the Republic of Macedonia, according to the interpretation of the Macedonian press.

Commenting on the trilateral meeting of the Foreign Ministers of Bulgaria, Greece, and Serbia, which took place in Sofia on Saturday, the Macedonian paper "Vecer" states that Mladenov and Greek Foreign Minister Dimitris Droutsas are pressuring Macedonia to make concessions to Greece; the article is entitled "Droutsas and Mladenov Seek for Us to Yield about the Name".

The notorious dispute between Macedonia and Greece led the latter to veto the former's NATO accession in 2008, and has been hindering the start of Macedonia's EU accession talks.

Greece is the reason Macedonia is listed in the UN not as "the Republic of Macedonia" but as "the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia; as an administrative region in Northern Greece is also called Macedonia, Greece is concerned that recognizing its northern neighbor under the same name would fuel territorial claims. EU and US efforts for mediating and resolving the name dispute have failed over the intransigence of the two parties.

The Macedonian "Vecer" Daily, which is known to be close to Macedonian Prime Minister Nikola Gruevski, cites the Greek top diplomat as saying that Greece would like to resolve the name dispute and see Macedonia join the EU as soon as possible but that Skopje knows very well what it has to do for that to happen.

Another leading Macedonian daily, "Dnevnik", has published almost the same article but with a different title, "Droutsas: Skopje Knows What It Has to Do to Join EU".

The almost identical articles of both dailies quote the Bulgarian Foreign Minister as declaring that Bulgaria considers the name dispute a bilateral issue between Macedonia and Greece, but that it is high time that a sensible solution be found so that Macedonia could progress.

He has reiterated the three major requirements for EU integration – the adoption of EU law, regional cooperation, and problem-free relations with neighboring countries.

The Vecer daily points out that Mladenov and Droutsas did not specify whether the Macedonia-Greece name dispute was an explicit matter of their trilateral meeting with Serbian Foreign Minister Vuk Jeremic.

The major outcome of the Mladenov-Droutsas-Jeremic talks were the declarations on part of Bulgaria and Greece that they wanted to see Serbia in the EU by 2018.

The forum comments below the articles in both Macedonian dailies are dominated by opinions describing the trilateral meeting of the foreign ministers of Bulgaria, Greece, and Serbia as "the three musketeers" and "three hungry wolves" wishing to partition the Republic of Macedonia; some forum users even see it as a reminiscence of the Balkan Wars of 1912-1913 when, according to the official view of the Skopje historians and government, the three "Balkan imperialists" formed a union to partition the spoils of Macedonia.

This view is considered offensive in Bulgaria as back at the beginning of the 20th century Bulgaria based its claims on the region of Macedonia (part of the Ottoman Empire till the First Balkan War of 1912) on the affiliation of the majority of the Macedonian population with the Bulgarian nation through ethnicity, language, religion, culture, and traditions, while Serbia and Greece sought to grab chunks of Macedonia based on the principles of balance of power under which none of the three major Balkan states – Bulgaria, Greece and Serbia – at the time was supposed to be allowed to become bigger and therefore more powerful than the others.

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