Nato secretary general Jaap de Hoop Scheffer arrived in Skopje on April 21 for talks with Macedonian leaders, MIA news agency reported.

The visit comes barely a fortnight after the Nato summit in Bucharest, where Macedonia did not receive an invitation to join the alliance over a Greek, which made some Macedonian politicians say Scheffer was an unwanted guest in Skopje.

Emerging from a meeting with Macedonian foreign minister Antonio Milososki, Scheffer said that there were two things Macedonia could do – either look back into the past or look forward into the future. He expressed resolve that Macedonia would achieve what it failed to achieve at the summit in Bucharest.

Nato's secretary general is also due to meet Macedonian president Branko Crvenkovski, prime minister Nikola Gruevski and defence minister Lazar Elenovski.

Scheffer is set to reiterate Nato’s wish to invite Macedonia to the alliance once it resolved its name dispute with neighbouring Greece, urging the two countries to reach agreement swiftly, which would allow Macedonia join the alliance simultaneously with Croatia and Albania. It is unclear how Macedonia's snap parliamentary elections on June 1 would impact the talks with Athens.

Greece refuses to accept Macedonia as the name of its neighbour, claiming that it was the name of Northern Greece and that Skopje's use of it as the official name of the country was indicative of its implicit territorial claims over the Greek province. The thorny name issue has been poisoning Greek-Macedonian relations for 17 years now, since Macedonia broke away from former Yugoslavia in 1991.