Scant optimism about Gruevski – Papandreou meeting - South Eastern Europe

Tue, Feb 09 2010

Scant optimism about Gruevski – Papandreou meeting

Wed, Nov 25 2009 09:30 CET byClive Leviev-Sawyer 2274 Views 59 Comments

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Scant optimism about Gruevski – Papandreou meeting

Macedonian prime minister Nikola Gruevski.

Greece's prime minister, George Papandreou.

The meeting in Greece on November 27 2009 between Greek prime minister George Papandreou and his Macedonian counterpart Nikola Gruevski is hardly likely to produce progress in resolving the dispute between the two countries about the use of the name Macedonia, media reports in Skopje said.

The meeting, held at the invitation of Papandreou – who is also his country’s foreign minister – will follow a trilateral meeting among the leaders of Greece, Macedonia and Albania.

Governing and opposition parties in Macedonia welcomed the meeting held out little hope, Skopje-based Kanal 5 television channel said, as quoted by Bulgarian news agency Focus.

The Democratic Union for Integration (DUI), a member of Macedonia’s ruling coalition, was optimistic and expected that before the December 2009 European Council meeting there would be a solution.

The European Commission has recommended that a starting date be decided for negotiations with Macedonia on it joining the European Union, but it is widely held that progress is unlikely unless the name dispute is solved.

"The meeting in the village of Pili in Prespes is a historical chance for Macedonia to become part of Europe," said leader of the opposition Albanian party New Democracy Imer Selmani.

The leader of the opposition Social Democratic Union of Macedonia (SDSM) Branko Crvenkovski said that the country did not need now false actions, but true efforts to find a solution.

Media reports in Athens quoted a senior Greek foreign ministry source as saying that the bilateral meeting between Gruevski and Papandreou would not mean parallel talks on the name dispute and said that the process of seeking a solution remained with the United Nations.

The foreign ministry source said that Papandreou would give Gruevski the message that his counterpart’s country’s EU prospects depended on a solution based on a name with a geographical element for common use.

Past attempts at a solution have included a proposal for the name "Republic of Northern Macedonia".

United States ambassador in Skopje Philip Reeker said that the Papandreou-Gruevski meeting could prove crucial to a swift settlement of the name dispute, Balkan Insight said.
"We are looking forward to this meeting, which is crucial for name talks," Reeker told local media. "We believe that Macedonia and Greece can find an acceptable solution," he said.

In an interview with Greek media on November 23, Greece’s alternate foreign minister Dimitris Droutsas was quoted as saying that it was in the hands of the government in Skopje to "abandon their intransigent stance and extremist nationalist rhetoric".

"Groundless and historically unfounded claims do not benefit our neighbouring country’s people, who are in immediate need of the prosperity and growth guaranteed by the European perspective. We are going to support this perspective but we want - and we must – be clear: there cannot be a start of EU accession negotiations without a prior resolution of the name issue. This is our clear and well-known position. There is no room for misunderstandings," Droutsas said.