Prime Minister Nikola Gruevski met Tuesday with Greek counterpart George Papandreou at the sidelines of the EU-Africa Summit in Tripoli, Libya. This is the eight meeting of both prime ministers after Papandreou was appointed Prime Minister of the Greek Government.

PM Gruevski, who is accompanied by Foreign Minister Antonio Milososki at the summit, realized bilateral meetings with several European and African colleagues.

Abu Dhabi, 28 Nov. 2010 /Emirates News Agency (WAM)/ - Foreign Ministers of six countries comprising 'The Green Group', which includes the United Arab Emirates, have issued a joint statement to emphasise the strong ink between climate change and water.
The Green Group is made of the foreign ministers of the UAE, Cape Verde, Costa Rica, Iceland, Singapore and Slovenia. The statement, which was released in the run-up to the forthcoming 16th Conference of Parties in Cancun, also underlined the importance of improved water management.

The transfer of 7.5 million euros from Macedonia into countries considered to be tax havens through tax fraud by way of buying identities of foreign citizens were the main reason for the Thursday visit of the Public Revenue Office (PRO) inspectors backed by the Revenue Police Office to six of 26 firms housed in the building on Pero Nakov bb Street housing also A1 television, MIA reports.

“The control was targeting the Misirkov printing house, Plus produkcija DOEL Skopje, Sinim DOEL Skopje, Akstra trejd DOEL Skopje, AKS-stra DOEL Skopje and Vreme EC Skopje. Neither A1 nor any member of the Ramkovski family was a subject of control, said the director of the Public Revenue Office, Goran Trajkovski, at the press conference Friday.

- The EU - Republic of Macedonia Joint Parliamentary Committee will convene meeting Monday and Tuesday in Brussels. In draft recommendations, which should be adopted on Tuesday, it is expected the European Commission recommendation for start of EU accession talks with the Republic of Macedonia to be confirmed and to send call to the European Council not to further postpone start of the negotiations but to "begin in the shortest possible time."

Called by Public Revenue Police (PRO) inspectors, the financial police entered the building housing a few firms of Velija Ramkovski and the studio of A1 television on Thursday night. A1 accused the police of trying to stop the airing of their program. A1 journalists Borjan Jovanovsk and Biljana Sekulovska opened the studio of A2 television appealing to the Macedonian citizens to defend freedom of speech and democracy in Macedonia in which, according to them, fascist dictatorship ruled. The Ministry of the Interior issued an official announcement that the police acted at the request of the Public Revenue Office and that they had a court warrant for the intervention.

The state universities are a forbidden zone for the implementation of the Framework Agreement and the concept of equitable representation of ethnic groups should not be put into practice there. They are autonomous institutions that are neither public administration nor a public service and are operating under a separate law – the law on higher education, says Constitutional Law and Political System Professor Gordana Siljanovska in response to Ombudsman Ixhet Memeti’s appeal to the University of Ss Cyril and Methodius to provide information about the professors’ ethnicity with the aim of checking if the principle of equitable representation is honored, Nova Makedonija reports.

 

Macedonian Prime Minister Nikola Gruevski met Tuesday in London with his British counterpart David Cameron. The meeting was also attended by the countries’ Foreign Ministers Antonio Milososki and William Hague. After the meeting, Gruevski voiced satisfaction with his talks with PM Cameron and with UK's support for Macedonia’s strategic goals. According to Gruevski, Cameron was interested in detail about the entire name dispute as well as the efforts for its prompt settlement. Gruevski, who is in a two-day visit to Great Britain, is to take part at the European Leadership Forum and present investment opportunities in Macedonia.

 

“I am very sorry you are still not a member of the Alliance. Nevertheless I congratulate you for your exceptional contribution to the ISAF mission in Afghanistan and I thank you for your partnership with the US,” said US President Barack Obama at the meeting with Macedonian President Gjorgje Ivanov before the meeting of heads of delegations of the A5 countries. The process of overcoming the name issue was tabled at the meeting too. President Obama stressed on that occasion that the US remains dedicated to resolving this issue as soon as possible with a mutually acceptable solution.

“The USA is ready to help,” President Obama stressed.

- UN mediator Matthew Nimetz says recent erasing of Macedonian language from Macedonia's ID in the organization's register was a result of technical error without any political intent which has been corrected.

Chief of Macedonian diplomacy Antonio Milososki when commenting on the statement of Greek President Karolos Papoulias given during his visit to Sofia that 'the door of NATO will remain closed and accession procedure towards the EU will be frozen, as long as Skopje insists on the intransigent position on name issue' reminds of an old-fashioned nationalism. Milososki said that the dialogue with Greece must still resume.

 

NATO is going to adopt the new strategic concept for the next ten years adapting to the new global peace threats at its summit in Lisbon on 19-20 November. The summit will be attended also by a Macedonian delegation led by President Gjorge Ivanov.

The vote of the Macedonian emigrants and the manner in which political parties spent money on the election campaign are the most contentious issues of the modifications to the election law, according to the opposition and the experts, after the Ministry of Justice revealed Wednesday the modifications prepared in line with the recommendations from the OSCE.

The United Nations corrected the lapse and reentered the Macedonian language into the ID of Macedonia in the register of the UN. In the language column, “Macedonian” was inserted with and addition in brackets reading: (of the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia) and a few hours later the column had is former look back before the unauthorized intervention took place, that is to say, without the explanation in brackets.

The Democratic Union (DU) provided an initiative to President Gjorge Ivanov Monday for calling a leaders’ meeting with the chairmen of the political parties at which adopting a platform for Macedonia’s integration into NATO and opening of EU accession talks will be discussed, Vest reports.

The Macedonia language late Monday has been reinstated in Macedonia's ID as member-state in the UN register, reports MIA.

The term Macedonian is again reinstated in the language graph, which due to unauthorized intervention last week disappeared from country's ID. The correction was made after the reaction of the Macedonian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Macedonian mission in the UN to the Cabinet of Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, as well as the UN Secretariat, which expressed assurance that world organisation remains on its principles and respect of established practice in relation to the use and naming the Macedonian language.

The capacity for handling corruption of the institutions of the United States of America will be assessed by experts from Macedonia and Sweden. The USA has the obligation to implement the United Nations Convention against Corruption. The training of the Macedonian and Swedish experts for this responsible and difficult task took place in Vienna on 7-8 October and the evaluation can now begin, Vest reports.

Macedonia got an apology from UN Secretary General Bank Ki-Moon after the Macedonian Ministry of Foreign Affairs filed a note of protest to the UN because the Macedonian language disappeared from the ID of the country in the register of UN member states.

Macedonia’s contribution to the ISAF mission in Afghanistan is going to remain the same. There are no announcements that the Macedonian contingents would expand again. Although formally out of NATO, Macedonia remains to be a loyal and active exporter of security side by side with all NATO member states. This is at the same time the main argument why the country should join the Alliance as soon as possible. President Ivanov said in the base in Kabul that the Macedonian peacekeepers were the true image of the Macedonian army, Vecer reports.

- Brussels and Washington should insists that Greece honor the Interim Accord of 1995 and accept for Macedonia to join NATO under the anachronous reference of FYROM, says former UNMIK chief in Kosovo Soren Jessen Petersen and Daniel Serwer from the US Institute of Peace in Washington in a New York Times article.

“Certain progress can be noted in the area of information society services, that is to say, in the establishment of the Macedonian Academic and Research Network (MARNET)”.

This is the only sentence in the latest report from the European Commission on Macedonia’s progress in which the term “Macedonian” is used. The term “state language” substitutes for “Macedonian language” in the entire report of 81 pages.

EU Ambassador Erwan Fouere apologized Wednesday before the MPs and the diplomatic corps in Parliament for the misunderstanding over the use of the term “state” instead of “Macedonian”.

The apology came in the wake of the request for an explanation from President Gjorge Ivanov and the Members of Parliament.

- Foreign Minister Antonio Milososki handed over the Council of Europe chairmanship to Turkey and stressed that Macedonia showed maturity in managing this institution. At the same event, Milososki signed the third additional protocol to the European Convention on Extradition.

- PM Nikola Gruevski expressed great satisfaction from the report that was handed over to him by EU ambassador Erwan Fouere on Tuesday. According to Gruevski, the report noted progress and acknowledged invested efforts.

The Republic of Macedonia is going to hand over the Chairmanship of the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe to the Republic of Turkey in Strasbourg on Wednesday. With this act, Macedonia is going to complete its 6-month Chairmanship of the managing body of the oldest Pan-European organizations for protection of human rights, democracy, and rule of law.
Macedonian Foreign Minister Antonio Milososki is going to address the meeting, outlining the activities that the Macedonian Chairmanship realized over the past six months.

 

Poland, as future holder of the European Union Presidency, supports the Union's enlargement, Macedonia's accession to the organization and faster settling of the Skopje-Athens name row, Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski said at a joint press conference with his Macedonian counterpart Antonio Milososki in Skopje Monday, MIA reports.

"We wish Poland's EU Presidency in the second half of 2011 to be ambitious promoting an enlargement of the European family. We are particularly interested in completion of the accession process of the Western Balkan countries. Nobody is going to be happier than me when countries like Macedonia join NATO and the EU. I hope that 2011 will be the year of EU enlargement,” Minister Sikorski said, affirming Poland's readiness to share its EU-integration experience with Macedonia.

Minister Milososki expressed satisfaction with the traditionally close relations between the two countries, which, as he said, set a solid base for bolstering bilateral cooperation.

In this respect, he underlined the significance of a declaration Macedonia and Poland would sign Monday, thus launching the 'Skopje Conference' process under the Dutch-Polish model for supporting the EU accession negotiations.

Under the declaration, Poland will assist Macedonia, when it starts the accession talks, to meet the standards of the EU acquis chapters for justice, internal affairs, common foreign and security policy, Minister Milososki said.

- Spanish Ambassador to Macedonia Jose Manuel Paz Agueras says that Macedonia has so far been unknown to Spain. In his view, the country should celebrate what is positive and all EU member states agreed that the country made a remarkable progress to attain the goal and join the European family. He says the whole region, especially Macedonia as a candidate for joining the Union, is very important.

Ukrainian firms are seriously interested in the energy projects in Macedonia primarily by the principle of concession management. The paper has learned from the last visit to Ukraine by a Macedonian delegation led by PM Gruevski that Ukrainian firms are interested in Cebren and Galiste. Ukraine is also very much interested in importing Macedonian farming and pharmaceutical products.

Macedonia and Ukraine have excellent political relations that should be accompanied by reinforced economic cooperation, said Prime Minister Nikola Gruevski after Meeting Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych in Kiev Wednesday.

The Macedonian prime minister stressed that there were great possibilities for intensifying the economic cooperation, primarily by exporting Macedonian products to the Ukrainian market. In his view, there are also great opportunities for investments by Ukrainian firms in Macedonia, which would give an additional impetus to the economic cooperation.

Lustration is a painful process and what has been going on recently is not surprising, the experts who drafted the law, say. The lustration commission should continue its work and there is no need of rushing and putting of pressure in order to obtain the original files that may be kept by the secret services of the ex-YU republics.

After the commission for verification of facts declared the functionaries of BDI, Minister Musa Xhaferi and MP Fazli Veliu, as clean for the second time, and following the announcements from GEM (Citizens for European Macedonia), that new documents are expected in someone else’s yards and the doubts concerning the capacity and dignity of the lustration commission members, the dilemma whether and how the lustration should continue imposed itself openly.

- Some 1,200 soldiers took part in the most massive military exercise “Balkan Flash 2010” and the exercise was monitored by NATO assessors and military attachés of the EU member-countries.

After the files about the leaders of BDI, various sources announce new informant files about Macedonian functionaries from the current and previous system including incumbent functionaries of VMRO-DPMNE.

The state lustration commission has already issued decisions to MPs and ministers confirming that they had not collaborated with former secret services. However, it is ever more speculated that there are files about functionaries of the governing party. Even in the procedure before the lustration commission, some of the governing MPs saved themselves with a revote of the commission members, while the opposition said a deal had been entered between VMRO-DPMNE and BDI for protection of their functionaries.