Macedonia has no problem with Greek Prime Minister Kostas Karamanlis's statement in Strasbourg that he and another 2.5 million people in Greece are Macedonians. Macedonia's politicians respect his right to declare himself as whatever he likes. But they expect the same thing from Greece.
The Macedonian Assembly elected Ljupco Svrgovski new state prosecutor yesterday afternoon. The ruling parties were able to secure a quorum of 61 parliamentarians to elect Svrgovski to this post. The parliamentary opposition walked out of the Assembly, with the explanation that the majority did not observe the procedure.
Croatian Foreign Minister Kolinda Grabar-Kitanovic met with Foreign Minister Antonio Milososki in Skopje on Wednesday. She announced investments by Croatian companies and exchange of experiences for the EU integration processes.
Kosovo's status and the outcome of the parliamentary elections in Serbia are not a direct threat to Macedonia's security, the National Security Council assessed at its session yesterday. Macedonia's security services were instructed to dedicate special attention to the extreme groups and the large quantity of weapons in the region, which, together with the weak Kosovo institutions, are possible security risks.
Why should BDI remain in the Assembly if the Government does not observe the Constitution and the Badinter principle and if it derogates the institutions, BDI Deputy Chairwoman Teuta Arifi said. This is the argument that BDI leader Ali Ahmeti will use to convince the international community representatives that the BDI Central Presidency's decision to withdraw from the Assembly is right.
"Start of the negotiations for membership between Macedonia and the EU will be one of the tasks of Slovenia's presidency of the EU," Slovenian Foreign Minister Dimitrij Rupel said in Skopje, at the joint press conference with Macedonian Foreign Minister Antonio Milososki. Repeating Slovenian Prime Minister Janez Jansa's message, Rupel stressed that "a lot of hard work" lies ahead for Macedonia if it wants to achieve this objective.
Slovenian Prime Minister Janez Jansa said in Strasbourg yesterday that he hopes that Macedonia would be given a date for start of the negotiations for membership during Slovenia's presidency of the EU, in the first half of year 2008.
Germany will help Macedonia most if it fulfills the defined priorities during its six-month long EU presidency: resolving of the internal crisis in the European Union and resolving of the problems related to the EU Constitution. This was Deputy Prime Minister Gabriela Koneska-Trajkovska's reaction to German Ambassador Ralf Andreas Breth's statement before the Macedonian Parliament that Germany could not be defined as a special lobbyist for Macedonia.
Romania offered support for membership in NATO, schooling of Macedonian Army officers, and technical support in the demarcation of Macedonia's border toward Kosovo. These are some of the issues discussed at Macedonian Defense Minister Lazar Elenovski's meetings with the Romanian authorities during his two-day stay in Bucharest.
The aim of the renaming of the Skopje airport into "Alexander the Great" is not to provoke Greece; this was done for purely commercial reasons. This was the position that the Macedonian state leadership presented to Matthew Nimetz, UN mediator in the name dispute, in Skopje on Saturday. Nimetz was also told that the last concession that Macedonia can make as regards the name is the double formula, that is, the constitutional name for international use and a mutually acceptable name for the bilateral communication with Greece.
The final status of Kosovo and Macedonia's position on this issue were the central topics of discussion at Macedonian Defense Minister Lazar Elenovski's talks in the NATO headquarters yesterday. The defense minister met with the Belgian, Netherlands, Estonian, and Slovenian ambassadors to NATO, while in the afternoon he also met with NATO Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer.
President Branko Crvenkovski is going to invite Prime Minister Nikola Gruevski, Foreign Minister Antonio Milososki and Macedonian negotiator Nikola Dimitrov to consultations with the aim of coordinating the state position before UN mediator Matthew Nimetz's coming visit. The meeting may be taking place on Friday.
Branko Crvenkovski, president of Macedonia and supreme commander of the armed forces, spent Christmas with the Macedonian troops in Iraq, in the military base in Taji, where he had Christmas lunch with the Macedonian troops.
The Macedonian citizens will receive the new passports in four months, Interior Minister Gordana Jankulovska said at yesterday's presentation of the first personalization machine in the world, which is owned by the Interior Ministry. The new ID documents will be made on this machine, "Dnevnik" reports.
The Macedonian Parliament adopted the Budget for 2007 projected at 112.02 billion denars (about 1.82 billion euros), thus being the largest budget ever. Revenues have been projected at 108,623,000,000 denars, and the deficit at 3,394,000,000 denars, or one percent of GDP.
Defense Minister Lazar Elenovski discharged the head of the military intelligence and his two subordinates, heads of the intelligence and counterintelligence, over omissions in the case with the confiscated weapons. Elenovski will meet with President and Supreme Commander Branko Crvenkovski today whom he will ask for dismissals in the General Staff. As a result of the omissions in this case, the Defense Ministry will carry out internal reforms and rejuvenation.
PPD will enter the ruling coalition after New Year, Prime Minister Nikola Gruevski informed the members of the VMRO-DPMNE Central Committee. PPD sources confirmed that negotiations are currently underway for their entry into the Government.
Three former senior defense officials are in detention as of Saturday under suspicion that they are responsible for the affair with the ARM (Macedonian Army) weapons, which the police confiscated 10 days ago. The investigating judge ruled that Nelko Menkinovski, former assistant to the defense minister and head of the Sector for Logistics in the Defense Ministry, advisor Viktor Raicki, and Colonel Ilija Skodrovski, commander of the General Staff Command for Logistics who was discharged following the confiscation of these weapons, should be detained.
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs promoted in December the diplomatic journal Crossroads, aimed at promoting the Republic of Macedonia in the world and strengthening its public diplomacy through publishing articles addressing foreign policy issues.
"Crossroads is a response to the broader and evident need to increase our understanding of the region and the world and to foresee and deal with the new challenges and course of events," said Foreign Minister Antonio Milososki at the promotion of the first issue of Crossroads in the Club of Members of Parliament in the attendance of numerous representatives of the diplomatic corps and figures from the public and political life.
Despite the small progress, we cannot be satisfied with that which we achieved this year, Macedonian President Branko Crvenkovski assessed in his annual address yesterday. He warned that the country is at a crossroads: it will either join the European Union together with Croatia or immediately after Croatia, or it will remain in the same group as the other Western Balkan countries whose accession to the EU is uncertain.
The Central Europe Free Trade Agreement (CEFTA) that representatives of Macedonia, Croatia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Serbia, Montenegro, Albania, Moldova, Romania, Bulgaria and Kosovo signed in Bucharest, Romania, on Tuesday should open up a new age in the trade relations of the Balkan countries.
