United Nations' special envoy on the name issue between Greece and Macedonia Matthew Nimetz said that he currently did not see any deadlines for reaching a solution to the dispute, website Balkan Insight reported.

Nimetz' words came as new proof that working a way out of the row, which has been poisoning the relations between the two Balkan neighbours for 17 years, was highly unlikely before July 9, when Croatia and Albania will sign their accession protocols with Nato. The date was widely seen as Macedonia's last chance to join the other two Western Balkan states on their way towards acceding to the military bloc.

In April, as a result of the failure of the two states to come to an agreement on the dispute, Greece vetoed Macedonia getting invited to join the alliance at a summit in Bucharest, while Albania and Croatia got their invitations.

Nimetz visited Athens for a new round of talks with Greek foreign minister Dora Bakoyannis on June 26 and was scheduled to travel to Skopje on June 27 to meet Macedonian president Branko Crvenkovski and prime minister Nikola Gruevski.

The Associated Press reported the UN envoy as saying he did not think direct talks between the Greeks and Macedonians was a good option at the present moment in time.

Since Macedonia broke away from former Yugoslavia in 1991, Greece has argued its right to call itself like that, as this name coincides with the one of Greece's northern province, which, the Greeks say, is indicative of their neighbours' implicit territorial claims.

According to a report in Greek newspaper Eleftheros Typos earlier this week, Nimetz' most recent proposals include Macedonia changing its name to Northern Macedonia, Upper Macedonia or Vardar Macedonia.

Negotiations were intensified over the past month, with a round of talks held in New York. However, they saw no prospects of coming to a positive end as Greek and Macedonian officials became seemingly more unwilling to compromise.