Macedonia Hopes to End Name Row With Greece

Crvenkovski accused Greece of abusing its NATO membership to impose a solution.

Macedonia hopes within weeks to resolve a dispute with Greece over its name, so as to ease its entry into the NATO military alliance.

Greece has threatened to veto Macedonia's entry to the U.S.-led group unless Macedonia changes its name, which is the same as that of Greece's northernmost province.

"There are only two weeks to the (NATO) summit, that is a very short time and I honestly hope that this problem will be overcome," Macedonian President Branko Crvenkovski told a news conference during a visit to EU president Slovenia on Tuesday.

Crvenkovski said Macedonia was working on a "reasonable compromise" to end the 17-year-old name dispute, adding a name that did not hurt its national identity would be acceptable. But he said Macedonia was "not ready to accept a dictate from Athens", accusing Greece of abusing its NATO membership to impose a solution.

Macedonia hopes an April 2-4 NATO summit will invite it to join the 26-member military alliance alongside Croatia and Albania, whose invitations were agreed in principle in March.

"Macedonia expects membership invitation, all members of the alliance believe that Macedonia fulfils all criteria for NATO membership, the only problem left is a bilateral problem with neighbour Greece regarding the name of our country," he added.

Skopje uses the name Macedonia in bilateral ties with the United States, Russia, China and Canada but at the United Nations it is called "The Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia." NATO and EU also use the acronym FYROM.

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

Crvenkovski also said Macedonia hoped to get a date for starting accession talks with the European Union by the end of this year and to conclude talks on liberalising a visa agreement with the EU as well.

Slovenian President Danilo Turk told the same news conference the name dispute was a bilateral issue that should not weigh on Macedonia's accession to the EU.