The future of your country is in the European Union. The rate of your further progress will depend on your achievements and the European Commission will continue to assist you in achieving this goal, reads the letter of European Commission's President Jose Manuel Barroso to Prime Minister Vlado Buckovski, the Macedonian Information Agency reports.

Macedonia is not an immigration risk for the countries of the European Union, yet Macedonian citizens are exposed to humiliating and undignified treatment in the embassies of the European countries. This will be one of the arguments of the Macedonian experts, who on 28 March will begin the talks on liberalization of the visa regime with experts of the European Commission.

Macedonia is disturbed by the statement of Albanian Minister of Foreign Affairs Besnik Mustafaj for TV Alsat that Albania cannot guarantee the inviolability of the border to "the Albanian part of Macedonia if Kosovo is divided," Macedonia asked Tirana for an official explanation.

The financial bids for the power distribution utility (ESM) will be opened at 9.00 hrs on Thursday in the Government of the Republic of Macedonia. The deadline for providing the bids has been set for this afternoon, the Ministry of Economy stated.

The bids that will be submitted by 16.00 hrs today will be sealed off in a special box to be then taken to the Government and placed in a safe in a sealed room.

The Ministry of Economy is going to search for a new owner of the lead and zinc mines Zletovo and Toranica although it has not yet decided how to get out of the sales agreement with the US company Xeminex, which failed to invest anything since taking over the mines two years ago. It is also unknown if Xeminex will be asked to pay damages and when the new tender will be announced.

The Government is going to rent roads, rail infrastructure and the two airports - in Skopje and Ohrid - to provide money for the construction of Corridor VIII, said Transport Minister Xhemali Mehazi at the meeting with his counterparts from Italy, Albania and Bulgaria in Plovdiv, Bulgaria, at which they signed the declaration on accelerating the construction of Corridor VIII.

 

The Macedonian Government established the draft election code today and it submitted the same to the Assembly. Prime Minister Vlado Buckovski stated after the Government session that he expects the election code to be adopted by the end of this month.

"I am pleased that relations of confidence, that our two countries develop due to their historical and geographic proximity, enable us also in the future to enhance our cooperation, especially in the field of home security", says State Minister and Interior Minister of France Nicolas Sarkozy, in his Letter to Macedonian Foreign Minister Iinka Mitreva.

The secretary of the Democratic Party of Albanians (PDSH), Ruzhdi Matoshi, asked of BDI to watch the words they utter about the Albanian youth, especially about Enver Xhaferi, killed during the police action in Kondovo.

The coming parliamentary election will be a decisive test if Macedonia will move ahead faster or move further away from its integration with the EU and NATO, said President Branko Crvenkovski and the Ambassadors of the US, EU and OSCE, Gillian Milovanovic, Erwan Fouere and Carlos Pais, to Macedonia at their Thursday meeting with representatives of the media.

Utrinski Vesnik, 27 February, 2004

Even the people who viewed Boris Trajkovski a problematically elected president, who lowered the expectations threshold at a greater part of the electorate five years ago, understand today that his time, his policy, his tragic death, the dramatic coincidences and all serious positive and negative implications from this catastrophe, lift this man to the apex of popular memory and in the identification code of Macedonia’s new European political and statehood legitimacy. Indubitably, this remark risks to disrupt the pathos characteristic of the occasion and the usual expressiveness in somber situations. However, when the heads cools off, when the emotions calm, when the partisan or perhaps personal prisms break or retract, most of the people will come to this conclusion.

FAKTI, 27 February, 2004

Emin Azemi

A politician’s death will indubitably leave consequences to the development of that country. It is too early to say what the consequences will be, but one can certainly say that President Trajkovski’s death is a big blow to the policy of equilibrium he attempted to plant in the past few years.

According to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, around 1,500 Macedonian citizens are working in Iraq. The real number is far greater, yet no one can confirm it. People put their lives at risk for a monthly salary of at least $1,500 and free board and lodgings"Utrinski Vesnik" writes.

Workers travel to Iraq via Turkey, Kuwait and the UAE, not reporting at the Macedonian border what their final destination is.

European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso stated in the Macedonian Parliament this evening that by granting Macedonia the candidate country status, the EU showed that it had great expectations from the country.

On 15-16 February, a Delegation from the European Commission led by the Director of Financial Instruments in the Directorate-General for Enlargement, Dirk Meganck, will present to the Macedonian authorities the new instrument for Pre-accession Assistance (IPA) and initiate the preparations of the country to implement the instrument from 1 January, 2007.

"We expect objective valorization of Macedonia's achievements at the coming Summit in Riga and a strong political message concerning the fulfillment of our aspirations - membership of NATO by 2008," Macedonian Foreign Minister Ilinka Mitreva stressed at today's meeting with NATO Secretary-General Political and Security Affairs Deputy Assistant Robert Simons.

Several hundred Muslims in Macedonia held peaceful protests in front of the "Alkaloid" factory in Skopje against the caricatures of Muhammad published in Denmark. The director of "Alkaloid" is the Honorary Consul of Denmark to Macedonia Trajce Mukaetov.

The Muslims in Macedonia will hold peaceful protests today against the caricatures of Muhammad published in Denmark. They demand an apology from the Macedonian press, which also carried this caricature. The Interior Ministry informed that some diplomatic missions and consular posts in Skopje requested additional security for today. The Interior Ministry will take preventive measures and no problems are expected, the ministry stated.

In July this year MOBIMAK will rebrand into T-Mobile Macedonia, while in January year 2007 Makedonski Telekomunikacii will rebrand into T-Com Macedonia. This was announced officially in Skopje today.

At the end of February this year the Boards of Directors of Makedonski Telekomunikacii and MOBIMAK will have to make a decision on rebranding
of these two companies.

The Macedonian Foreign Ministry established weaknesses in the work of the Macedonian Embassy in Tirana, for which a procedure is currently in progress, the Foreign Ministry announced.