Greek Foreign Minister Nikos Kotzias paid a lightning visit to Skopje on Thursday, the capital of the neighboring Former Yugoslav Republic of Yugoslavia (fYRoM), where pledged Athens’ heightened support and mediation in the latter’s course towards the EU and security structures, “once the name issue is solved.”
“Greece and fYRoM are obliged to live together in peace, cooperation and progress, as long and as soon as the name issue is solved and every type of irredentism is struck down…” Kotzias said.
He spoke in Skopje at the invitation of his counterpart Nikola Poposki.
Athens and Skopje, despite strategic trade relations and back-and-forth visits by citizens of either country numbering into the millions every year, are still at odds over the pesky “name issue”.
The problem stems from Greece’s standing opposition to use of the stand-alone name “Macedonia” by the one-time Yugoslav republic, given that Greece’s largest province is also called Macedonia, which approximates to the historical kingdom of antiquity by the same name and which occupies roughly one-half of geographical Macedonia.
