Name talks to continue tomorrow
There was a climate of cautious optimism in Athens and Skopje over the weekend ahead of fresh negotiations on the Macedonia name dispute in New York tomorrow. In Athens, diplomats told Kathimerini that a compromise could be reached ahead of NATO’s summit on April 2-4, where the possible accession of the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (FYROM) is to be discussed. Officially Foreign Minister Dora Bakoyannis was more reserved, saying, after a meeting with Prime Minister Costas Karamanlis, that she «felt neither optimistic nor pessimistic.» Bakoyannis is to meet her FYROM counterpart Antonio Milososki on the sidelines of a European Union summit in Slovenia on Friday to discuss any headway made in New York by the two country’s representatives in United Nations-mediated talks. On Saturday, FYROM’s president, Branko Crvenkovski, stressed the need for a «logical compromise» to the name dispute. FYROM’s envoy Nikola Dimitrov told reporters he had been given «precise instructions» but did not elaborate.
