POLAND SUPPORTS CONSTITUTIONAL NAME OF MACEDONIA
admin1 – May 10, 2007 – 9:37am

Macedonia received support for its constitutional name in Warsaw yesterday, a rare occurrence from an EU member country. Expressing support for Macedonia's constitutional name and criticizing Greece for imposing an artificial problem, Polish President Lech Kaczynski said after the meeting with Macedonian President Branko Crvenkovski that Poland supports Macedonia in the name dispute with Greece.

"Dnevnik" reports that Poland supports Macedonia's membership in the EU and NATO. The Polish president stressed that Poland, as member of EU and NATO, has good relations with Greece, but that this does not mean that it supports this country in all its positions.

"On my behalf and on the behalf of the Government, I say that we cannot understand why our friends do not want to recognize Macedonia's constitutional name. Macedonia does not have any territorial claims against Greece. I cannot understand this, considering that the problem is artificial. We cannot understand that a country is creating a problem that, according to us, does not exist. We do not want to use names such as FYROM, which cannot be found anywhere else in history," Kaczynski said.