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....

Letter to Kofos by World Pan-Macedonian Associations

A Critique of Consequence

Concerns over the feasibility of special advisor to ELIAMEP Dr. E. Kofos's suggestions for a solution to the Macedonian naming dispute between Athens and Skopje

November 2010

Dear Dr. Kofos,

In regards to the Rose-Routh seminar you gave in Skopje on October 20, 2010 at NATO's Parliamentary Assembly vis-à-vis the imbroglio Greece has with its northern neighbor, and in regards to recent news reports coming out of Skopje attributed to you, we the Worldwide Pan-Macedonian Associations would like to offer you our comments. We feel that the Pan-Macedonian Associations, as the bastions of Hellenism in Macedonia, should be an important voice and an inseparable figure in the academic, political, and historical discussions on the name issue with our neighbor. We are the representatives of millions of Macedonians in Greece and the Diaspora; we are diachronic, and independent of all political parties.

We respect your efforts over the last five decades in dealing with Skopje's Macedonism however we must strongly object to the ideas that you and your colleagues in ELIAMEP have promoted to the citizens in Greece and the Diaspora, to various foreign ministers of the Hellenic Republic, and most recently to politicians and journalists in Skopje.  

Throughout your thesis you un-necessarily refer to that state as.....

Understanding the Macedonian Name Dispute and its importance to the United States

by Ioannis Fidanakis
President of Pan Thracian Union of America “Orpheus”.

It’s been 19 years since a small former republic of Yugoslavia declared independence and attempted to hijack the history, identity and name of the ancient Greek Kingdom of Macedonia. Originally known as Vardar Banovina, the region was renamed by Josip Broz Tito in the aftermath of the Second World War. The name chosen by Tito was the Socialist Republic of Macedonia, an ideal chose as it allowed him to promote the concept of an oppressed ‘Macedonian ethnicity’, in which he could develop the idea of reunification of the greater geographic region in hopes of gaining access to the Aegean Sea, through the Greek port city of Thessaloniki. With the fall of the former Yugoslavia the republic was admitted into the United Nations under the provisional name, Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia. Much has changed since this disagreement between Greece and FYROM began in 1991. The world is a much different place now, and despite a world economic crisis Athens and Skopje continue to fight over the word ‘Macedonia’.

Most Americans are ignorant of the name dispute and those that have some type of understanding find it ridiculous to fight over a name. Their inability to understand the Greek position is the failure of Greek America to properly explain their concerns to the average American. It is with this said, that a new campaign has been launched hoping to educate and bring attention to the Greek position concerning the name dispute. Focused on....