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As Epami said on another posting, clearly a case of "philotimo" poisoning the soul. (Euripedes, Medea, Act II, Scene 2.) Sometimes a Classical education like I received at Eton can be very helpful in dealing with modern Greeks and their ways, oriental or otherwise.

David/Dr Cornelius stop pretending to be Epaminondas and Boris Johnson on this sites. You are the most ridiculous old fool on this site playing both sides for a couple of years now. do get a life

and all readers the best way to get on David's nerves is to simply ignore him and do not respond

Sorry, Smithy, the pass has been sold by the Roman Empire. "Macedonia Salutaris" was used for hundreds of years to describe today'd fYRoM area (later they called it "Macedonia Secunda", Aegean Macedonia being "Macedonia Prima".)

Either we accept both sets of ancient names from Greek and Latin sources alike, or we accept neither. That's logic.

"Republic of Northern Macedonia", "Macedonia Salutaris""??!
Who are they kidding! Greece should not accept any reference to Macedonia in the proposed name. It would be an insult to Greece and quite possibly cause further tension in the region.

Something is wrong here. Bakoyannis says that "Greece is ready for a mutually acceptable solution" and that FYRoM is "stalling" to gain time (her 9 July speech).

But when I look at the proceedings of the International Court of Justice (ICJ), I find that the opposite is true. FYRoM kept to its original July 2009 deadline, but Greece had to play for for time as its dossier was unready, so has a deadline of January 2010. Here is the extract from the ICJ proceedings that proves it:

http://www.icj-cij.org/docket/files/142/14963.pdf

Something tells me that Macedonia may yet win the ICJ case, in which case it will be very interesting to see what Greece (which will be internationally discredited if it loses) will do next.

Alex - Tak ! (sorry - I mean "yes" !) This does seem to be a sensible way forward.

didnt think you could be the other Boris - I remember him gibbering well on questions about Miss Jamaica on Have I got news for you.
Both names for FYROM sound very good to me. Let them flip a coin on which one then no-one can be blamed at a later date! Can always blame the Poles if Zdroj is picked!!

Alex - Despite his Classical education, Boris the Mayor of London does not have a good grasp of Balkan or even Hellenic geography, like when he confused an Albanian delegation with the Moldovan delegation in the London Wine Fair ! So I try to be better than him.

Seriously, "Republic of Northern Macedonia" - which is what Nimetz seems to be aiming for anyway - sounds like the best idea going. And, as you say, make it universally applicable for bilateral relations as well.

It always helps to have a "Plan B", however, in no matter which walk of life, and IF it is judged necessary to have a name that reflects Classical history (not necessary in my view, but I may be in a minority !), then it is much more logical to use the Roman name - which lasted for 300 years - than the Alexander the Great name, that lasted for a mere 30 at best.

This brings us back to "Macedonia Salutaris" as a Plan B, as it demonstrably covered most of the territory of today's FYROM, and was quite distinct from "Macedonia Prima", which equally demonstrably covered most of the territory of today's Greek Province of Macedonia. (This historical precedent for two Macdedonias, and their respective boundaries, is so important that I am deliberately repeating myself, which I do not normally like doing. It does completely resolve the present quarrel.)

The minor question of how best to translate "Salutaris" remains - open to suggestions ! The "Makedonija Zdroj" translation would be perfect, as it is 100% accurate and reflects wide real-life usage elsewhere. Unfortunately, this is in Poland ! Hopefully Macedonian or Bulgarian scholars could come up with the equivalent word in a South Slavonic language, though maybe "zdroj" or "zdroy - phonetic pronounciation" might be ok after all. It has the great merit of not being Greek !

That's enough for now - apologies for the length of this post !

Thanks Boris I will try to get a copy. ...and to think I was writing to the Lord Mayor :-)
Republic of Northern Macedonia seems perfect.

to "Northern Macedonia" - and also Greece is obliged to recognise that a "Macedonia" exists outside its frontiers. A bit of a quid pro quo - sounds a good idea to me.

(So let's await the thousand-and-one reasons why Greece won't accept it !)

I'm for the "Republic of North Macedonia" name. That's a good compromise. Skopje recognize therefore that a South Macedonia exists, the Greek Macedonia. The one condition is this name to be used by all the countries and internationally recognized.

A double name for this country would be a bad idea. Let's be homogenic...

Alex - many thanks! Nah, I'm not the Mayor of London, alas - I'm not an Old Etonian with an inflated sense of his own importance !

One very good book about Greece and the Balkans from 1770 onwards is David Holden's "Greece Without Columns", ISBN 0 571 08372 2, published Faber & Faber, London 1972, still available via eBay and Amazon second-hand. The book is very wide ranging and perceptive, but also more than a little critical of modern Greece. The author - former chief foreign correspondent of the Sunday Times - was assassinated soon after he wrote it (seriously !)

"Nostrave" - meaning "to the health" would certainly be the Bulgarian for "Cheers" - the same as the Polish "Na zdrowie" or the Russian "Na zdarovoye", all relating to the common Slavonic word for "health". There must be a correct form in Macedonian for this - I'll try to check to see what this is.

Hope this is all helpful meanwhile

Once again Boris you are a hive of information!!! -seems like we are the only 2 interested in this subject now. You dont happen to be the mayor of London do you or just have similar name?? Indeed Nostrave is the Bulgarian/ FPROMian (I'm guessing on this but since the language is very very "similar" I would guess its the same word) for Cheers although I have probably mispelt it. Can you recommend any english books which cover 19-20th century history in the Balkans accurately? I would value your advice.

Alex- yes, "Prima" does mean 'first'. I am not sure we can deny that to the Hellenes, given that Pella and Edessa (highly important historical sites to them, less so to everybody else) lie within the southern of the two Macedonias, i.e "Prima".

Presumably "Nostrave" is the local dialect for "Na zdorovoye" (Russian) meaning "to your health". The Poles have a neater way of putting this, namely the word "Zdroj" at the end of a place-name, meaning precisely the same thing (as in Krynica Zdroj), which is pretty common in Poland for any health resort. I know one can't use Polish in Macedonia, but there ust be some local equivalent expression. (If so, it would certainly have a very good Classical Roman-era precedent !)

How about Macedonia Nostrave??? Does Prima mean first? Not sure the FYROM would like to see that in front of any Greek province. Cheers!!

Alex - thanks ! "Salutaris" actually means "health-giving", so it's not at all pejorative. Not sure we could get away with a Latin title these days, but I'm sure others could think of present-day alternatives that mean much the same thing.

Boris your knowledge of the history of this area is pretty impressive!! You also seem to substantiate that it is an awful long time (pre slav) since there was any independence in the region and following your line lets call it Macedonia Salutaris. Sounds a good name to me.

Didnt explain myself properly Boris, I believed the word Greek came from the Turkish for people living in that region. I was told it meant slave or worker or some other slightly derogatory meaning. I didnt mean it was the Turkish word for Greece. However I cant substantiate this and would like to know if others have thought the same as me.

Alex - just a small point of correction. There was an independent Macedonia in Roman times up to 146 BC (Alexander died in 320 BC). The last king of Macedonia was Philip V (there would have been a Philip VI, but Philip V murdered him personally !)They were not so much kings as war-lords, and the Romans fought the First, Second, Third, and Fourth Macedonian Wars against them.

Philip V made the rather bad mistake of allying with Hannibal of Carthage against the Romans. This was Not A Good Idea. When Rome finally defeated Carthage after the Second Punic War, also in 146 BC, it indulged in early "ethnic cleansing", put the entire population into slavery, deported them, and razed the entire city of Carthage to the ground, spreading salt so that nothing would grow there ever again.

Macedonia received a milder version of the same treatment: the "Hellenic" ruling class was deported to Thrace, the Illyrian servant class was retained for the use of the incoming Romans, and henceforth Macedonia became a Roman Province (it later split into two Provinces, Macedonia Prima and Macedonia Salutaris, the later on the same territory as today's FYROM. So FYROM has actually quite a good precedent for its existence under the Macedonian name.)

Peter - not sure you're right about "Greece" being a Turkish word, as the Turkish for "Greece" is Yunanistan. "Yunan" (same word as "Ionian") is the word for 'Greek' in all languages in Asia Minor and nearby Asia, including Farsi (Iranian) and Afghani.

"Greece / Grecia" probably comes from Venetian or Italian instead.

Hope this is helpful.

Also looking at that map Thessaly wasnt included in original Greek Kingdom but added later. I have heard no complaints about it.

cele
Dont understand your version of history. The people of Crete are Greeks, Thracians disappeared or were absorbed by new influxes 2000 years ago (you dont hear any of them trying to create a seperate country for Thracians) Since Alexander the great I have never seen or heard of an independent Macedonia. It was systematically part of the Greek and Roman empires then the Byzantine empire then the greater Bulgarian empire then the Serbian empire then back (maybe Albania also got in as well) the Bulgaria and then to Turkey. Tell me when until now was it last an independent nation??

cele, my limited understanding of Greek independence is that I'm sure they would have taken a lot more land from the Turks if they had been a stronger nation in the 1830's. They settled for what they could. Better to have independence for a smaller region than still be subjected to the yolk. Bide your time and strike at the right moment. i also understand the word Greece comes from a Turkish word hence Greeks say they are Hellenic. When enetering Greece the sign certainly doesnt say (in Greek alphabet) welcome to Greece.

Why do you say I am pro Greek i am certainly not pro Greek (or Bulgarian or anything else) merely trying to understand a very complex and obviously touchy subject !! Ireland was divided so was Korea and many others so whats the problem with calling yourself North Macedonian?? You say the language didnt stay behind (was that a typo??) and if it did stay behind then I guess it pretty much influenced other slavic languages which should now be called macedonian or am I missing something. By the way your great great great grandfather (say 1840 ish) could just have easily said he was christian when asked his nationality as race and borders were unknown under Ottoman control just religious preference

The language of the modern day Macedonians was Macedonian. It is a little hard to standardise a language after a 550 year yoke, especially after most of the neighbouring regions gain independence before you. Nevertheless, the language was finally standardised.

After the slavs occupied the balkan region they obviously affected other areas more than Greece (though Greece was also heavily slavicized - this is well documented). One particular area they occupied was Macedonia. The original inhabitants may or may not have left the region but the language certainly didnt stay behind because Macedonian was spoken in geographical Macedonia ever since the slav incursion. We so-called "FYROM'ians" speak a slavic language known as Macedonian. the modern day Greeks speak a modern day language called Modern Greek (not Medieval, nor Koine Greek, nor Attic, nor Doric, blah blah the list goes on) Since when does an ancient language determine who a modern day race is? Why isnt Greece then called the Republic of Koine? Of course they wouldn't because circumstances change, culture changes, population changes etc, im not an anthropologist but im sure they must be nodding with agreeance with what I am saying. I didnt know this was a qualifier at all for country name vs nationality/race. Look at other cultures in the world. Im sure it happens.

Question for Peter (and other pro-Greeks): Why was the geographical region of Macedonia not included in the first state of Greece was called The Kingdom Of Greece which was in 1832. It wasn't until 1913 where teh geographical region of Macedonia was then annexed to the rest of this kingdom. Kinda peculiar, I say. Here is a very interesting map of this... also notice Crete's annexation to the kingdom and then Thrace (an ancient civilisation documented as being non-Greek, an ancient Minoan civilisation (Crete) and Ancient Thracians (Thrace)) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Greekhistory.GIF

i am talking about the language of the current day not ancient times. What was the current language called prior to 1944? Does anyone speak ancient Macedonian today or does everyone speak a regionalised version of Bulgarian?

My great grandfather was born in the 1800's (in a village outside of Bitola aka Manastiri). I asked him what nationality he was (before he died). He said Macedonian. He spoke Macedonian and knew only of a Macedonian people being Macedonian, not Greek, Bulgarian, Serbian, Turkish etc.

He and in fact around 2million others believed this to be the case.

Point - this is all prior to 1923 (re: peter's comment).

PS It is good to see there a lot of Macedonian intellectuals in the 21st century something unimaginably achievable during the 550+ yer Ottoman yoke. Perhaps one of the weaknesses Macedonia has had for a very long time.

I am proud to say that I am Macedonian and that there always has been a Macedonian consciousness.

To my 'pre Dedo' Grujo, this 1 is for you ; ) - "Makedonija za Makedoncite"

Peter - with respect, you asked for dates for references to Macedonia. Try 146 BC for the founding of the Roman province of Macedonia, or 318 AD for the division of Macedonia into two by the later Roman Empire: Macedonia Prima for today's Greek bit, and Macedonia Salutaris for fYroM.

Macedonia was well into the Roman consciousness (as the Bible also bears witness), and the process of assimilation was described as follows (Encyclopedia Britannica) :

"The reign of Augustus began a long period of peace, prosperity and wealth for Macedonia, although its importance in the economic standing of the Roman world diminished when compared to its neighbor, Asia Minor.

The economy was greatly stimulated by the construction of the Via Egnatia. This was a Roman road constructed by Ancient Rome in the 2nd century BC. It crossed the Roman provinces of Illyricum , Macedonia , and Thrace, running through territory that is now part of modern Albania, the Republic of Macedonia, Greece, and European Turkey.

Through the installation of Roman merchants in the cities, and the founding of Roman colonies, the Imperial government brought, along with its roads and administrative system, an economic boom, which benefited both the Roman ruling class and the lower classes. With vast arable and rich pastures, the great ruling families amassed huge fortunes in the society based on slave labour."

In short. populated by a Roman merchant class with a probably Illyrian serf/slave class. No mention of the Greeks at all, unless they were serfs / slaves (unlikely - they were more likely to be itinerant professionals like doctors and lawyers.)

We have all somehow ignored the construction of the Via Egnatia in 188 BC between present-day Durres (the port for Italy- Brindisi) and Istanbul, via firstly the Macedonian mountain towns and then all the Thracian coastal towns. This must have re-vitalised the local economy considerably, and also aided population movement (and of course, rapid movement of the Roman Legions.)

Macedonia was probably never the same again; today's E90 east-west super-highway following much the same route is but a modern-day successor.

Plus ca change, plus c'est la meme chose...

My belief is that prior to the 1st Balkan war no-one really considered Macedonia as an ethnic entity as it was almost wholly "occupied" by Bulgarians Greeks Albanians or Serbs (with a scattering of Turks). Only after 1944 with Tito in control was a Macedonian language even considered. Try finding a reference before that date. Because so many previously considered themselves Bulgarians and have Bulgarian relatives the current FYRoMacedonians have been given free reign in obtaining Bulgarian passports. I would be interested to know how many of them now carry dual nationality (out of convenience),

Jim - I take your point about the "snapshot" nature of these maps. However, they certainly do disprove the claim that the territory concerned was "always ethnically Greek".

To determine "original inhabitants" you either have to go back to archaeology (when the evidence suggests that prior to 500 BC the inhabitants were Illyrians, i.e. same ethnic stock as today's Albanians), or look at those fragments of recorded history that remain.

These suggest that there was a Hellenic governing/ royal elite in Macedonia from c.500 BC (including all the Philips and Alexander) until 146 BC, when the Romans rather sharply dispersed it to Thrace following the Fourth Macedonian War, leaving the Illyrian serfs/slaves where they were (doubtless to provide the incoming Romans with experienced domestic servants !)

Subsequently (c.350 to 750 AD) there emerged TWO Macedonian provinces - Macedonia Prima (today's Greek province) and Macedonia Salutaris/ Secunda (today's "fyroM"). After that, with the Slavonic tribes invading the two provinces, the Romans switched the name "Macedonia" to cover Thrace (today's region of Plovdiv !) Flexible people, the Romans.

Under the Byzantine and later Ottoman empires the region lapsed into some obscurity, and not much is known. Until the Congress of Vienna in 1815 and Greek independence in 1831, when the region started opening up and the German/French cartographers got busy !

In short, to answer your point, it looks as if the earlier nineteenth-century maps recording a 100% "original inhabitants" presence of today's fyroMacedonians in all of both today's Macedonias (except for that coastal strip) are probably correct.

More to the point, from empirical evidence nobody is in a position to contradict them....

Thanks, a bit of comedy with your last point is needed to make lite of the situation. However, the problem I have always had with ethnographic maps is that they only account for ethnic population densities during the period that they are created. What I am challenging here (minus the alien abduction of the original maps) is that there is no real way to establish a genological time line to say that defacto FYROMians were the original inhabitants of the region or Greeks. The only thing we do know for sure is that Greeks dominated that region for some time. I will exclude the oh so repetative argument that "slavs came 1000 years post Alexander the Great" I will look only at the worth while ethnographic evidence.

What I see is that during the period that these maps cover they indicate that the significant majority of FYROMians occupied the region. Can we or should we accredit this however, as defacto evidence that FYROMians are the "original inhabitants"?

Cheers

I stupidly forgot the 1882 German / Uni of Chicago URL. Here it is:

http://www.lib.uchicago.edu/e/su/maps/kiepert/G6801-E1-1882-K5.html

And here's the University of Chicago URL of an 1882 German map by Professor Heinrich Kiepert, showing the same thing. No Greeks north of the Salonika coastal strip: the population of Greek Macedonia (except for the coastal strip)seem to have been all Slav-speaking and of Bulgarian origin except for an admixture of "Illyrians" to the far west (presumably these are what we now call Albanians.) Not a Greek in sight, in other words.

I have a feeling that, the more of these old maps of the Balkans that I unearth, the more they are all going to tell the same story: both Macedonias were ethnically Bulgarian and Slav-speaking until a century ago (except for that coastal strip, which all maps seem to be agreed was ethnically and linguistically Greek.)

(Of course, somebody will doubtless claim that this is all an Anglo-American/Turkish/Macedonian/German conspiracy, and that the real maps were destroyed/concealed in Moscow/beamed up to the Moon with the Apollo mission.) But I leave the objective reader to make up his own mind.

Jim - Success ! Here is the URL of the 1861 French Balkan Map that I mentioned earlier. complete with colour key (like all maps of this type, it is incredibly detailed. Must have taken the mapmaking inspectors a long time to travel the region on a donkey....)

URL is:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Balkans-ethnic_(1861).jpg

Jim - I see your point, though you can't really dismiss the 1923 arrival of the Pontian Greeks as just a "minor factor" - its effect on Greek Macedonia was pretty major !

The key evidence is contained in a whole series of large and detailed ethnographic maps now available on the Internet (and some in the National Libraries of the USA, UK, and Poland), carried out mainly by French and German scholars in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. All of these show the current territory of Greek Macedonia as being populated almost entirely by Bulgarian-speaking Slavs, with small "islands" of Greek , Turkish and Vlach speakers. Except for the narrow coastal strip around Thessaloniki, which is nearly always shown as being ethnically Greek.

The last of these maps that I have to hand dates back to 1916, carried out by Germans. (In 1916 Germany was of course at war with the UK and France, so this map is hardly an Anglo-French plot !) Its title is: Laender- und Voelkerkarte
Europas, von Professor Dr. Dietrich Schaefer, Auflage Oktober 1916. It is indeed amazingly detailed and very precise in that way that Germans always do so well, and it portrays exactly what I describe above. (Those details should be enough for you to Google a copy.)

There was also an extremely good French map from 1861 that showed the same thing - I managed to download this onto my computer, and I'll see if I can backtrack to find its URL so that I can post it here.

These maps do not just suggest - they "demonstrate" that prior to 1916 the non-Greek Macedonians were indeed very substantially in the majority in the current Greek province of Macedonia, which is the point that you originally raised.

Boris - I follow your points however, you lose me at the "original inhabitants". How does one establish that the Macedonian Greeks living in the region are less original than the FYRO-Macedonians claiming the same thing? Excluding the 1923 population exchange influx. Lets look at the other Greeks that had been living then for generations. How does one discredit them as original but credit FYRO-Macedonains as original inhabitants.

Your thoughts.

Cheers.

I deliberately omitted the Roma, as they are not a settled population but a roving one: hence their other name of "Travellers" (or Didecoys, or Pikeys, which are slightly more pejorative names.)

Most member-states (except Malta) have had a Roma issue in the past few decades: Greece currently has one (as in the UNHCR report), so has Bulgaria, so has Romania, and so has Northern Ireland.

To complete the picture, Italy has a specific problem with incoming refugees from North Africa landing at Lampedusa, and Greece has a similar problem with refugees from the Near East. Both countries refuse to accept immigrants and send them on to France, who sends them to Calais / Sangatte, at which point the UK tries to refuse entry. UNHCR has picked up this point too, and has set up an office in Calais charged with returning refugees to their homeland. In so doing UNHCR is specifically critical of UK, France, Italy, and Greece, for playing "pass the parcel" with the problem.

I really hope that this completes the picture, which is necessarily a bit of an exhaustive one.

Jim -

I take your point, but the unusual thing about the Greek "human rights" case is that it concerns alleged injustice to the original inhabitants of the region of Macedonia, not the immigrants or incomers. (In fact the major immigration was that of Pontian Greeks from Asia Minor in 1923 onwards, and they seem to have ended up ruling the province !)

The cases you cite in France, Italy, and Germany all concern immigrants / incomers and not the original inhabitants, so there is no analogy with Greece.

However, recent issues (now solved) with Bretons in France, Basques in France and Spain, Catalans in Spain, and Wends / Spreewender in Germany, DID concern discrimination against the original inhabitants, so these cases were exactly analogous to the Greek Macedonian situation. Happily, they are now solved, and UNHCR hopes that Greece can follow in their footsteps and do the same thing (not very likely, admittedly.)

Other minority problems, such as those of the Russians in the Baltic states, are closer in analogy to the Pontian Greeks, as the Russians only arrived after 1918 (in Latvia) and 1945 (in Estonia and Lithuania).

Some EU member states have no unresolved minority issues at all:

Sweden - Finland - Denmark - Netherlands - Belgium - Luxembourg - Portugal - Austria - Czech Republic - Hungary - Poland - Slovenia - Malta - Slovakia (there is a Hungarian minority, but it is well treated), and Bulgaria.

Romania has a nasty unresolved problem with its Hungarian and German minorities in Transylvania, but Romania is a bit of a special case (some would say a "basket case" !)

Hope this perspective from "this side of the Pond" is helpful, or even 'insightful' !

Sorry Boris, I assumed it was one and the same. But thank you for the response.

To be clear however, I am not saying that it is ok for Greece simply because France and other EU states are doing it. I am not advocating it.

What I am saying is that it is not an isolated issue it is a European issue and it will not be any sooner resolved if there is no EU solidarity on dealing with it.

Additionally, I must question that you dismiss the fact that human rights isssues in other EU states are "odd black marks" and irrelevant. The massive deportation of refugee seekers from Itali a few years back can be viewed as more then an odd black mark and irrelevant to the dicussion at hand. My point is that if we want change it must be through a larger concensus of EU states with international cooperation vis-a-vis UN oversight to deal with human rights issues rather then saying, Greece=bad.

The issue of human rights abuses are much more wide spread then I think you are giving it credit for and it is equally important to discussin in the greater scheme of human rights issues.

Your thoughts?

Cheers.

Sorry Jim - there are two Borises, not one. I certainly did not say that Republika Makedonija should not "change one iota" - personally I think it should stop erecting statues of Alexander the Great and doing anything else provocative. And I agree with you that both sides should sit down for some serious bilateral discussions.

That said, I don't agree with you about the UNHCR report. Under the rather arcane judicial processes of the European Court of Human Rights, this report could well form the first "evidential" phase of a formal indictment in due course, and indeed is drafted in such a way as to point in this direction.

The fact that some other EU member-states have the odd black mark against them here is - frankly - irrelevant. It has never been a justification in law that others may get away wtih the same offence - it's a bit like a burglar claiming that because some other houses were burgled by someone else, he should be acquitted !

Cheers

I am always open to debate, but this seems more like a Greece bashing than anything else. Boris, the UNHCR document that you have listed about is not an indictment as you state. It was a primary investigation into the treatment of ethnic minorities in Greece and the international laws that govern their rights. The investigation has made some findings that have indicated that Greece must do more to ensure said rights. This can not be considered in any way an indictment. The inference of the word would mean that some formal legal action is being taken against Greece and this is simply not the case. But the realities in Greece are no more important than the ones in France, the UK, Germany and other places. Case in point the French have openly stated that the headscarf that muslim women wear is not in line with the French social consciousness. Is this acceptable? I think not. Or perhaps the daily discrimination that people from Indian or Pakistani descent face...is this not any issue either? Or better yet the Turks living in Germany that have experienced some serious civil and human rights violations. What I am pointing out here is that the issues that you and others are so adamently pointing out to be present only in Greece are major issues in almost every European country. It is not an isolated issue.

Futhermore, regarding your comment about FYROM not having to any obligation to change one iota is somewhat far fetched do you not think? You claim that Greece has not honoured one single agreement...however, it was the "Republic of Macedonia" that agreed to and signed the UN agreement that ensured that "Macedonia" would use the name FYROM for all international relations in 1994. Greece agreed to this and signed the document. Since 1994 however, FYROM has time and again failed to fullfil its end of the agreement with constant violation. However, overlooking this lets look at one fact, Greece has time and again tried to have serious bi-lateral talks with FYROM and negotiations with the involvement of the UN, yet FYROM has constantly refused any serious attempt to resolving the issue. Nationalism is not only present in Greece, Gruveski's entire political platform is centered around the "name issue" and nationalism is alive and well in FYROM so I really believe that it is not a one sided issue here. Both parties need to sit down and resolve the issue.

Cheers

The name should not have Macedonia in it. They are not macedonians. They are yugoslavians. How about the communist republic of yugoslavia. That's a great name.... Macedonia is a province in Greece in case you were wondering.

For ease of reference (and avoidance of denial !), here is the URL with the most recent UNHCR indictment of Greece re. its treatment of the Macedonian and Roma minorities:

http://www.unhcr.org/refworld/pdfid/49b7b2e52.pdf

Greece has nothing going on for it except its past- no wonder they are bleeding nationalism.
It's the mark of all has-beens.

Well Mr Yannis, Greece obviously DOES discriminate and enforces it's own agenda if it fails to recognize or accept that people call themselves and refer to themselves as Macedonians.

Sorry to disappoint you in turn, Yannis, but Greece has indeed been indicted this year for discrimination of its citizens on racial and ethnic grounds by UNHCR - the URL link is elsewhere on the Sofia Echo site.

And, by the way, not everybody called "Boris" is Macedonian. Some of us come from much farther north.

As I understand it, Vinozhito might have got more votes if the Greek Post Office had not "mistakenly" forgotten to deliver all its electoral leaflets (details again elsewhere on this site).

The region of 'Vardarska' has no connection at all with 'Macedonia' and its majority Bulgarian citizens no connection to 'Macedonians'
Sorry to disappoint you Boris, but the ethnic groups you talk about, namely the Vinozhito party representing 'ethnic Macedonians' (aka a made up term to describe bilingual FYROM sympathisers and people with dual citizenship) got no more than 2000 votes in the European elctions in Greece. Very similar amount of votes to what your 'minority' got in Albania and elsewhere.
They are recognised as a bilingual Slavic community in Greece. But first they will never be accepted as 'Macedonians' to the detriment of 2.5 million Greeks who consider themselves Greeks because they are Macedonians and secondly what gives you the right to speak on their behalf. They certainly don't want that people from your Diaspora in Canada and Australia do that.
Greece does not separate and discriminate on its citizens on racial and ethnic grounds.
What hurts you most is that the people you call 'ethnic minorities' choose to self identify as Greeks and choose to have a Hellenic ethnic consciousness.
But then again your nation tries to hold itself together and to form an ethnic consciousness as we speak.
The real problem for you Boris is that you want to replace people's choices and ethnic consciousness with your racist and irredentist cult of 'Macedonism'.

Greece and Bulgaria are the only countries in the world with no Human rights. No ethnic citizens, no other laNGUAGES PERMITED TO BE USED.
gREEKS ENJOY ETNIC RIGHTS IN EVERY COUNTRY OF THE WORLD, BUT IN gREECE ALL ETHNIC GROUPS ARE SUPRESSED, BANNED, PERSECUTED. iS THIS YOUR dEMOCRACY GENTLEMEN OF THE wEST? wHY FORCING mACEDONIA TO CHANGE ITS NAME? gREEKS APPLY A NIHILIST POLICY:"yOU DON'T EXIST", THEREFORE WE CAN DO WHATEVER LIKE WITH YOU. tHIS IS BARBARISM

Macedonia Republic is ubder no obligation to change one iota.
Greece has failed all the signed agreements.
So what guarrantee Macedonia has that this time Greece will honour the signature? Only a fool can believe them.Forcing Macedonia to alter its name is against all international and UN laws

Macedonia Republic is ubder no obligation to change one iota.
Greece has failed all the signed agreements.
So what guarrantee Macedonia has that this time Greece will honour the signature? Only a fool can believe them.Forcing Macedonia to alter its name is against all international and UN laws