Greek Foreign Minister Dora Bakoyannis admitted for the first time that Greece decided to veto Macedonia’s accession to NATO back in year 2007, that is, a whole year before the NATO Summit in Bucharest. The Macedonian Foreign Ministry interpreted this statement by the Greek foreign minister as a direct confession by Greece that it never intended to hold serious talks on the name dispute, but that it only took part in these talks formally, all the time looking for an excuse for the talks to fail.

The Greek foreign minister gave this statement at the party convention of Nea Demokratia on 16 February. Bakoyannis’s speech was first removed and then reposted on the website of the Greek Foreign Ministry on Thursday.