Statements made by President Karamanlis are usually referred to as ‘cryptic’. Given the large powers which Andreas Papandreou stripped from the presidency in 1985, it’s a wonder he can be deciphered at all. But being simply himself, the Ethnarch, his few but potent words are carefully recorded, spread around and mulled over.
Even if Greek objections fail at the UN and other international forums, the feud between Athens and Skopje is likely to continue for a very long time. After a possible toughening of the Greek stand, it can only be settled on a bilateral level.
On December 12 the European Community (which is so adept at putting things off) decided not to decide on what the future name of the former Yugoslav republic of Macedonia should be.
“Here perhaps for the first time in the history of European art, emotion and pain are fully realized.” So the eminent art historian Manolis Hadzidakis has written of frescoes which can still be seen in Slavic Macedonia where tragedy seems to be indigenous.
One of the more soul-scorching, mind-boggling, tummy-aching ironies of history is that the land which produced the leader who first conceived the idea of the brotherhood of man, and proclaimed it while out on the road to its realization at a banquet set for 10,000, over 2000 kilometers from home (Alexander the Great at Opis), should two millennia later give its name to a dish of diced, mixed vegetables which are, more likely than not, leftovers from last night’s dinner.
Athenians last month swallowed hard when they heard that members of an Albanian mafia were out to kidnap gold medal champion weight-lifter Pyrrhus Dimas. Although born and raised in Albania (he only received a Greek passpost just before flying off to Barcelona), he is an ethnic Greek, and judging from his first name, probably of royal Epirot descent.
The author of this article toured Greece’s neighboring former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, as well as Greece’s northern frontier regions. After extensive interviews with the Republic’s political leaders and other influential personalities, he came to the conclusion that the two countries are characterized by mutual suspicion, intransigence and unwillingness to compromise. He also concludes that for the time being there is no hope of a breakthrough on the dispute over the neighboring Republic’s use of the name ‘Macedonia’.
The Athenian’s political-diplomatic correspondent travelled twice to the neighboring former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia within a month. This second time, his meetings included exclusive interviews with President Kiro Gligorov, President of Parliament Stojan Andov, Foreign Undersecretary Aleksandr Dimitrov, and the local Albanian leadership.
As the rumblings grow louder and closer to the surface, developments indicate that the government is not even willing to accept a diluted version of a name for Skopje like ‘New Macedonia’, a formula being backed by most Western powers.
The EC seems reluctant to enter into the dialectical arguments of Greece and the self-proclaimed republic of Macedonia. Matters appear to be sapping Slavic resistance.
