No progress over Macedonia's name

MACEDONIA: MACEDONIAN AND Greek leaders failed to make progress yesterday on a dispute over the former Yugoslav republic's name that threatens to block its bid to join Nato next month, both sides said.

Macedonian prime minister Nikola Gruevski met Greek foreign minister Dora Bakoyanni on the sidelines of the EU summit following weeks of UN mediation to try to settle the 16-year-old name dispute. "We don't have anything concretely, no," Ms Bakoyanni said when asked if they had made progress.

Mr Gruevski told reporters after they met in a Brussels hotel: "There was no flexibility on the Greek side."

Greece has threatened to veto Macedonia's entry into the US-led defence alliance unless it changes its name, which is the same as Greece's northernmost province.

Asked whether a Greek veto was coming closer, Ms Bakoyanni said: "Well, you know the Greek position. This has been very clearly expressed." But she added: "We still have time."

UN envoy Matthew Nimetz has been shuttling between Skopje and Athens trying to broker an agreement. Diplomats said he has proposed five possible variants on Macedonia's name.

Potentially complicating the negotiations, Macedonia's coalition government was heading for collapse yesterday after the main ethnic Albanian party said it was pulling out over a row on minority rights, in a new threat to Balkan stability.

Macedonia borders Kosovo and was rescued from all-out ethnic civil war in 2001 by Nato and EU mediation. "We have a serious political crisis, and it's happening at the least opportune and hardest moment for our country," president Branko Crvenkovski said, adding that the state should focus on the goal of Nato entry.

Ethnic Albanian DPA leader Menduh Thaci said his party would quit over the government's failure to back laws allowing greater use of the Albanian language and flag, and to provide benefits for veterans of the 2001 Albanian insurgency.

© 2008 Reuters

This article appears in the print edition of the Irish Times