Akritas Macedonian blog: PM Gruevski´s hardline policy leaves FYROM out of NATO summit yet again

Saturday, November 27, 2010

PM Gruevski´s hardline policy leaves FYROM out of NATO summit yet again

Australian Macedonian Advisory Council
November 26, 2010

FYROM Prime Minister Nikola Gruevski´s hardline policy to his country´s naming dispute with Greece has once again caused FYROM to not be invited to take part in the latest NATO summit (where new members are then invited to join the Alliance) which took place on 20 November 2010 in Lisbon.

Immediately after the summit, instead of taking responsibility for his failure once again for FYROM to be invited to join the NATO alliance (after its failure to join NATO in 2008 and a stagnant EU candidature in 2010 (http://www.ana.gr/anaweb/user/showplain?maindoc=9321518&maindocimg=9318247&service=96&showLink=true), Gruevski stated that his country "had not joined NATO, because of ´interference´ from Greece, due the name issue".

Meanwhile, the citizens of the FYROM (of whom 35% are of Albanian origin) are becoming....
more restless with the current government´s inability to solve the dispute with Greece and to become integrated in EU and NATO institutions, which will provide much needed security and economic assistance to the country. The Left-wing opposition party (SDSM) has urged snap election after FYROM failed to join NATO for a second time (http://www.emg.rs/en/news/region/139238.html).

The Greek President Karolos Papoulias has sent yet another message to the government in FYROM after the NATO summit, urging that "as long as they insist on their intransigent positions, so much the more they shall keep the door of NATO closed and the accession procedure towards the European Union frozen" (http://www.ana.gr/anaweb/user/showplain?maindoc=9321518&maindocimg=9318247&service=96&showLink=true ).
Greece can hardly be blamed for FYROM´s situation. Since Gruevski´s nationalist party, the VMRO-DPMNE, took power in 2006 his government has engaged in a string of provocations towards its neighbours:

In 2007 renamed Skopje Airport as ´Alexander the Great Airport´
In February 2008 Gruevski was photographed laying a wreath at the tomb of a 19th century revolutionary and a map of "United Macedonia" which includes parts of Greece and Bulgaria
Erected a statue of Alexander the Great in Prilep
In January 2009 renamed the main highway which runs through FYROM from Serbia to Greece ´Alexander of Macedon´ highway
In December 2008 the national stadium in Skopje, ´Gradski Stadium´, was renamed ´Philip II Arena´
In 2009 plans were announced for the construction of 22-meter fountain and statue of Alexander the Great in Skopje´s Central Square

Various foreign and domestic observers have expressed their concerns at the intense ´antiquization´ or ´antique macedonization´ of FYROM under Gruevski borne out in the provocations mentioned above. According to an article in FYROM newspaper Dnevnik (6 August 2009), a poll conducted in FYROM showed that 59% of the respondents believed that PM Nikola Gruevski should focus all his efforts on the economy, rather than his ´Ancient Macedonia´ or ´Antiquization´ program.

These provocations are in violation of the Interim Accord, signed by Greece and FYROM in 1995, under which FYROM was allowed to be admitted as a member of the UN (http://www.un.org/documents/ga/res/47/a47r225.htm).

Various NATO and EU reports on FYROM´s progress have noted Gruevski´s government´s provocations towards Greece are deliberate intransigence concerning the UN-brokered name negotiations with Greece. EU Enlargement Commissioner Olli Rehn has also criticised the "ongoing use of the language of hatred in some [FYROM] media not only against Greece, but also against Bulgaria". A Greek Foreign Minister spokesman has also reiterated that FYROM Foreign Minister Antonio Milososki, amongst others, at "every opportunity attacks Greece in a provocative way and burdens the UN framework procedure" (http://www.ana.gr/anaweb/user/showplain?maindoc=9341595&service=142 ).

Mr. Gruevski should focus on his country´s crippling unemployment, which is now at a staggering 33% and is the highest in Europe, instead of deflecting domestic attention away from this serious problem by the making of various nationalistic stunts which provoke Greece and other neighbours.

The Australian Macedonian Advisory Council (AMAC) believes that it is now time for PM Gruevski´s government to abandon its nationalistic approach and work closely within the UN framework to solve the naming dispute with Greece, which will ensure that the FYROM´s integration into EU and NATO structures, or risk becoming permanently isolated.

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Regarding the Greek debt Crisis....

Greece, a peripheral european state was encouraged to join a badly designed single currency by the rich elite of countries that dominated it. Those countries, having set up borrowing rules for the currency union, were the first to break them and did so with impunity.

Through complacency and inept financial regulation, and lacking good investment opportunities in their own stuttering economies, they then encouraged their banks to lend recklessly to the country on the periphery.

When those investments went sour, the elite governments -influence from Germany- with theirs globalizing neoliberal leadeships, rushed to bail out their banks first by loading up the debtor government with yet more loans to pay them back and then by imposing a foreign overlord to extract repayments through legal force.

We need History Lectures based on FACTS not political motives!

In November 5-8 2009 at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City took place the so-called "7th Macedonian-North American Conference on Macedonian Studies".
Although a number of presenters strictly deal with subjects of the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, there are politically motivated lectures that attack and disparage the people of Greece, the Greek Cultural identity and as they twist historical facts through their disturbing presentation.
These motivated lectures are influence under the umbrella of the Slavmacedonism [5], a post-modern ultra nationalist ideology.

Read more here.

Modern Macedonian question - What is it all about?

Ancient Macedonia was a Greek kingdom situated in the north end of Greece. It became the most powerful Greek state during the 4th century bc after the decline of Athina (Athens) and Sparta. Under the leadership of King Philippos II and his son Alexandros III (Alexander the Great) the Macedonian army conquered most of the world and created the world's largest empire ever, including South-East Europe, most of Asia and North Africa.
After the death of Alexandros, Macedonia followed the fate of the rest of Greece. It became a Roman province, later a Byzantine province, it was occupied by the Ottoman empire and finally it became part of the indepented Greek state in 1912.
Today a Slavic nation attempts to adopt the history and culture of Macedonia as their own and present themselves to the world as "ethnic Macedonians" and "descedants of ancient Macedonians"
This is a blatant attack against Greece and its world wide respected history.
The FYROM Slavs who claim to be "Macedonians" have no historical, cultural or linguistic relation with ancient Macedonia. They descended into the region not before the 6th cent. A.D. long after ancient Macedonia was homogenized with the rest of Greece. Their 'Republic of Macedonia' occupies less than 10% of ancient Macedonia.
Therefore their claim on ancient Macedonia's name, history, culture and symbols can not be justified.

Aegean Macedonia.........

is a FYROMacedonian Slav nationalist term used to refer to the region of Macedonia in Greece, in the context of a United Macedonia.
The origins of the term seem to be rooted in the 1940s but its modern usage is widely considered ambiguous and irredentist.
The term has occasionally appeared on maps circulated in the FYROM, which envisioned Greek Macedonia (referred to as "Aegean Macedonia") as part of a "Greater Macedonia", and is regarded as a challenge of of the legitimacy of Greek sovereignity over the area.

Akritas Macedonian blog

Saturday, November 27, 2010

PM Gruevski´s hardline policy leaves FYROM out of NATO summit yet again

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