- The Macedonian basketball players who won the fourth place at the European Basketball Championship were welcomed by over 5000 people at Skopje’s airport "Alexander the Great,” Monday. The central celebration took place at Macedonia square where citizens were able to welcome the players.

The joy of the nation is worth more than a medal. The uniting power of victory is amazing. We returned with a trophy after all. McCalebb is one of Europe’s top five players. These are some of the headlines on today's front pages. 

All world media positively assessed the game of Macedonian basketball representation in Lithuania and claim that Macedonia was the biggest surprise at the European Basketball Championship 2011. Media from the neighboring countries share the same conclusions.
 

The Macedonian soldiers being part of the peacekeeping ISAF mission participated Wednesday in one of the most perilous operations defending the US Embassy in Kabul, Afghanistan, which got under attack from the Taliban. The assault of the Taliban hardliners was responded to, largely by the Macedonian armed forces, none of whom fortunately was injured in the shootout.

President Gjorge Ivanov talked on the phone with the commander of the Macedonian military mission in Afghanistan and informed himself firsthand about the situation of the Macedonian peacekeepers in Afghanistan in the wake of the serious armed attack in the proximity of the Command of the international ISAF Mission and the Embassy of the United States of America in the capital of Kabul.  

- PM Nikola Gruevski congratulated the Macedonian Basketball Representation on their victory and President Gjorge Ivanov stated that the country’s 20 independence anniversary overlaps with the victories of our basketball team that has brought joy unseen before in the country.

The strong trust in the Government three months of holding the parliamentary elections is expected for it is logical for the citizens having voted for the governing coalition to be optimists that their choice has the capacity to carry out reforms in the country. A contribution to the heightened rating of the government was also made by the atmosphere created around the celebration of the 20th anniversary of Macedonia’s independence. This is how analysts see the results of the opinion poll of the daily paper Dnevnik, where over 59 percent of the interviewees said they trusted the government of VMRO-DPMNE and BDI. The ministers separately have fairly high ratings as well irrespective of whether they come from Nikola Gruevski’s or Ali Ahmeti’s team.

Communication expert Petar Arsovski is not surprised by the results since, as he says, after every election every government garners additional support, which is an expression of the optimism that the citizens that voted for them feel.

- With a dramatic finish, Macedonia beat host Lithuania with 67:65 and booked a place in the semifinals of the European Basketball Championship. Macedonians celebrated the victory of the Macedonian basketball players late Wednesday on the squares of their cities. On Friday, Macedonia is to play with Spain.

If thus far it was speculated that this is the key autumn when Prime Minister Nikola Gruevski and governing VMRO-DPMNE would prepare the nation for a referendum at which we would have to circle some modified name of our country for external use (because the battle is to not touch upon the constitution), now dates are also being thrown around. Unofficial information that is more frequently circling the political corridors is that the announcement for organization of a referendum will be held before 23 October, the Day of VMRO.  The ruling party has not commented on PM Gruevski’s speech held at the celebration of Macedonia’s Independence Day, in which he openly demonstrated preparedness for a compromise to be reached with our southern neighbor and called for unity. The party did not even want to comment on the information of possible dates, Kapital writes.

“We do not bid with dates, from the very first moment VMRO-DPMNE has had a clear stance, regarding the name issue that has been presented in all of our election platforms. And whether we are in favour of a compromise – absolutely yes! And it is absolutely certain that unity is needed for this issue,” the party said.

Newspaper Kapital analyzes that the speech of Prime Minister Nikola Gruevski at the celebration of Macedonia’s 20 years of independence, in which the main message was the one on national reconciliation and unity, stirred up fierce reactions on the political scene. PM Nikola Gruevski, for the first time, at an open appearance held a speech that pointed out that he is prepared to make a move. Gruevski has perhaps also previously called for unity, but this time in a role of a person who is carrier of the responsibility, practically asked all leaders for help in overcoming themselves and their partisan interests and unite around the joint Macedonian red lines.

"They ask me which is our name policy. This is the concept we promote and we ask for the support from all Macedonian citizens. The Constitution will not be changed in order to alter the constitutional name - Republic of Macedonia. We will not accept ideas and proposals jeopardizing the Macedonian national identity, nation and language. We will not allow the acceptance of any solution by individuals, government or parliament without the prior referendum of Macedonian citizens. Let's all unite over this. Let this be our red line," Gruevski said.

The talks between Macedonia and Greece concern only the name in the English language in diplomatic communication, said mediator Matthew Nimetz in an interview with Kanal 5. He denied the allegations of the Greek paper Kathimerini, which reported in its English edition that according to Nimetz Prime Ministers Georgievski and Simitis were closest to a solution with the name of Upper Macedonia.

As for whether Greece and Macedonia are ready for the final step of resolving the name issue after 18 years of strenuous talks, mediator Nimetz says he never makes guesses but would say this is a good moment for making special effort to resolve the name issue.

“The whole world wants to see this issue resolved. It would be good for the entire region and for Europe, particularly in these difficult times in other fields. Both countries have experienced leaders, new governments and new cabinets. Also, there are friendly relations between the two prime ministers and they can talk directly and honestly and that is a great plus. So I believe now is the time to make effort to solve the problem,” Nimetz said.

September 8, Independence Day, was celebrated with many events. Over a thousand participants took part in the massive celebration at which a military parade took place for the first time. Parliament held a meeting on Wednesday at which President Gjorge Ivanov said every independent country had to take its decisions bravely and responsibly.  One part of the celebration was the ceremony of transferring the Declaration of Macedonia’s Independence from the Parliament to the Museum of the Macedonian Revolution.

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton congratulated Macedonia on its Independence Day and said the USA was a friend and partner of Macedonia. Greetings also came from French President Nicola Sarkozy, Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands, the Japanese Emperor, as well as leaders of Sweden, Romania and Hungary.

- The central celebration of the 20th anniversary of Macedonia’s independence will begin on Thursday at 18.00 hrs. Part of the celebration will be transfer of the Independence Declaration from the Parliament to the Museum of the Macedonian Revolution. The fountain in the Makedonija Square with the Warrior on a Horseback monument will also be promoted. The celebration will culminate with a massive music happening.

Be courageous the way you were in 2001 when leaders reached the Framework Agreement. You should act in the same way now, be courageous and do something for your country, EU Enlargement Commissioner Stefan Fule said after meeting Prime Minister Nikola Gruevski in Skopje Monday.

According to Fule, a positive picture of the region has been created this year.

”Croatia completed the negotiations, as the other countries are moving forward. The resolution of the name issue would create a new impetus in the region and will make the country part of this positive picture,” Commissioner Fule said.

He firmly believes that the European Union is not going to import the name issue, yet he is an optimist that the dispute can be resolved by the end of the year.

Teuta Arifi, Deputy Prime Minister for European Affairs, sent a letter to Greek Deputy Prime Minister Theodoros Pangalos.

“It is a letter with ideas for cooperation, which are in the service of a Balkan region freed of prejudice, oriented toward a European future and a European idea,” Arifi said after meeting Skender Durmishi, Charge d’Affaires at the Kosovo Embassy in Skopje.

Arifi did not reveal any more details regarding the contents of the letter.

- The foreign ministers of Macedonia and Bulgaria, Nikola Poposki and Nikolay Mladenov, signed a memorandum on cooperation in European integration in Sofia Thursday. With this agreement Bulgaria is officially going to assist the harmonization of the Macedonian legislation and the strengthening of Macedonia’s administrative capacities.

 

 

“It is a program with cosmopolite dimension and mission –unification of all citizens no matter their political affiliation, ideology, religion and ethnicity, genuine unification for prosperous Republic of Macedonia,” Culture Minister Elizabeta Kanceska-Milevska described Wednesday the celebration to be organized on the occasion of the 20th anniversary of Macedonia’s independence. With events of all kinds, all September will pass in the spirit of the slogan “20 Years of Statehood, 20 years of Independent Macedonia, Together Under One Sun.”

“The central event is going to illustrate our past, present and future,” explained Kanceska-Milevska. She refused to reveal how much the celebration would cost and only stressed that all those involved worked on it with a lot of love.

The celebration was designed by director Dejan Projkovski, who stressed that the cosmopolite spirit of Macedonians was his guide.

“We developed the concept relying on the great thoughts of Goce Delcev (I understand the world as a field for cultural contest) or Koco Racin (If I didn’t build a home, the whole world is my home), wishing to emphasize the cosmopolite spirit of Macedonians,” Projkovski said.

On the occasion of the 66th Assembly General of the United Nations, whose opening has been set for 13 September, Prime Minister Nikola Gruevski is going to leave for New York, the Government said. Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou is going to attend the same event too. Prime Minister Gruevski said he always wanted a meeting with Papandreou whenever there was a chance and willingness from the other side.

“Whether I meet with Papandreou depends on him. Why should we not talk, raise issues and seek solutions?” Gruevski said.

A meeting between Prime Minister Gruevski and UN-appointed name issue mediator Matthew Nimetz is also possible. The last meeting between the two prime ministers took place two months ago on the sidelines of the meeting of the European Council in Brussels.

- Foreign Minister Nikola Poposki met in Zagreb his Croatian counterpart Gordan Jandrokovic and President Ivo Josipovic. Croatian Ambassador in Macedonia Zlatko Kramaric is especially satisfied that Minister Poposki’s first official visit is to Croatia. According to Kramaric, this is a very important message to Macedonia and a true recognition for Croatia whose experience Macedonia may find very useful.

In 2005, Greece agreed that Macedonia should realize the Euro-Atlantic integration under the reference of FYROM, according to the wires recently posted on WikiLeaks. In a document sent from the US Embassy in Athens, one month before Brussels decided on the application for Macedonia’s membership, it is said that Greece rejected Nimetz’s latest proposal yet the authorities said they would not object to the use of the reference FYROM in order not to block Macedonia’s progress.

According to the wire of 11 October 2005, then Greek Foreign Minister Molyviiatis said that the double formula proposal was unacceptable and accused Nimetz of siding with Macedonia. However, the document confirms that crucial for the USA at the time was for the name not to hinder Macedonia’s European integration.

In another wire of 18 October 2006 that WikiLeaks recently revealed it is said that then US Ambassador Gillian Milovanovic, although not being an optimist about opening membership negotiations with the EU, strongly believed that Macedonia would join NATO in 2008.

Foreign Minister Nikola Poposki is going to pay a one-day official visit to the Republic of Croatia and will be received by Croatian President Ivo Josipovic and his Croatian counterpart Gordan Jandrokovic.

“The responsibility for any dispute does not rest solely with one side. It is clear this is a bilateral problem with international dimension. We have demonstrated good will and that is how we are going to continue but we should also expect the same from the other side,” said Deputy Prime Minister for European Affairs Teuta Arifi after meeting former deputy prime ministers of European affairs in the Government Thursday.

Answering a reporter’s question regarding the imposed dispute, Arifi said Macedonia expected partnership from its international friends that would facilitate the resolution of the problem.

She also expected the coming report from the EC to be objective to and to realistically present the situation in the country.

An initiative for creation of a third political block could soon result from the ever more frequent talks conducted between the representatives of the parties that proved the greatest losers in the recent parliamentary elections. VMRO-NP, United for Macedonia and Dostoinstvo are political parties with right-wing orientation that have had the closest mutual communication but it will not be much of a surprise if others join them too. The biggest enigma is whether LDP is going to respond to their appeals for cooperation or this center party would take a different course at its coming congress.

There have been a few initiatives for establishing a third political bloc in recent years but they have all failed.

VMRO-NP Chairman Marjan Dodovski told Dnevnik Wednesday that such negotiations had been in progress.

An agreement has finally been reached at the State Census Commission that census taking couples should be of mixed ethnicity, Commission President Vesna Janevska told Kapital. However, the job that should result in a peaceful taking of a census is not yet over and the threat of imbuing this statistical operation with politics again has not been removed altogether.

“At the last meeting of the State Census Commission, we took a step ahead. Albanians and Turks agreed that census couples should consist of census officers of different ethnicity, which means that now the whole Commission has a uniform stance. The second part of the problem – the principle based on which the composition of the couples is determined - has left though. Our suggestion is that the two census officers should represent the two major ethnic communities in the region where they would be working. Albanians suggest different combinations depending on the municipality,” Janevska told Kapital.

Three initiatives for reconsidering the constitutionality of the authentic interpretation of the amnesty law are awaiting Constitutional Court judges upon the end of their summer recess. The initiatives were submitted to the Constitutional Court by the families of the 12 Macedonians kidnapped in 2001, the association Nadez (Hope) and certain Aleksandar Petrusevski, who says is a member of VMRO-DPMNE.

In the initiative that the families of the kidnapped filed on 28 July, it is said that the authentic interpretation of the law breached four articles of the Constitution and the main arguments are that military crimes and crimes against humanity can never become time-barred.

Macedonia is ready for finding a solution to the name issue. It is in our interest and we want a solution, Prime Minister Nikola Gruevski said in Vevcani Sunday. Asked about BDI leader Ali Ahmeti’s statement at the Conference dedicated to the Framework Agreement that time may have come for the international community to get involved more actively in the management of the problem, Prime Minister Gruevski said that suggestion had been made for a long time and not just recently.

“We are participating in all communications and contacts under UN auspices and we want a solution to be found as soon as possible because it is in the interest of our citizens and our country. Of course, we expect Greece to demonstrate will and we hope this is going to happen,” Gruevski said.

As regards the process of European integration, the prime minister stressed that serious progress had been made and that he expected a positive report from the EC.

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The completion of the reform processes and the resolution of the name issue with Greece should unfold in parallel so Macedonia could attain its strategic goal – the European integration, said Teuta Arifi, Deputy Prime Minister for European Affairs at the Thursday meeting of the parliamentary committee on European affairs.

There is no time to waste awaiting the report of the European Commission and as many recommendations as possible of Stefano Sannino, Director General of the Directorate General for Enlargement, laid out during his recent visit to Macedonia, should be realized, Arifi said.

New Defense Minister Fatmir Besimi announced putting of the defense budget back into the limits of the criteria and standards of NATO. Over the recent years, the budget has been gradually cut by the government financiers.

Minister Besimi met Wednesday with the former ministers with whom he shared experiences. His guests were former ministers Trajan Gocevski, Vlado Popovski, Vlado Buckovski, Lazar Elenovski and Jovan Manasijevski.

“We discussed the professionalism and the army reforms that are crucial for the Euro-Atlantic integration. We concluded that we should continue in the same fashion and weather all new challenges,” Minister Besimi said.

Greek police structures together with the local authorities tried Monday to divide the ethnic Macedonians in the Lerin village of Nered by staging a parallel celebration of the religious holiday of the Assumption of the Holy Mother of God.

The tense atmosphere became tenser still when police took into custody Tuesday the journalists of Kanal 5 and Vest.

In the picturesque village only ten kilometers of Lerin, populated solely with Macedonians, the Greek authorities allowed singing and playing of Macedonian songs for the first time. The goal was undermining the parallel celebration at the local stadium organized by the cultural association of Nered.

- Former U.S. ambassador to Macedonia Philip Reeker after meeting Tuesday with Macedonian Foreign Minister Nikola Poposki said that the U.S. position related to the name issue remains the same. He expressed hope that the name dispute can be solved rather quickly. On Tuesday, Reeker also met with Prime Minister Nikola Gruevski. After the meeting, a statement was released which read that the Macedonian Government’s basic priorities are the Euro-Atlantic integration and the constructive approach in solving the name issue.

After a break of a few months, the members of the State Census Commission are going to convene Wednesday in order to put into practice the political agreement between VMRO-DPMNE and BDI. Before the elections, the Census Commission was boycotted by its ethnic Albanian and Turkish members for they disagreed with the decision that the census teams should be ethnically mixed and insisted that they be formed solely of Albanians or Macedonians in the ethnically homogenous communities.

If problems occur in the implementation of the agreement, the composition of the Census Commission may change too but this information has not yet been officially confirmed.

“I had contacts with certain members of the Government and I received signals from them that there would be no problems. We have retained our position that the two major ethnic groups in a municipality would comprise the census teams,” says Vesna Janevska, president of the Census Commission.

The era of divisions in the Balkans is definitely over. We should now move toward an era of reintegration of a special kind. It is reintegration of countries that should recognize the equality of all their citizens before the law, said Daniel Serwer, conflict management expert from the Euro-Atlantic Center for International Relations in Washington at the Conference in Ohrid where the 10th anniversary of the Framework Agreement was marked.

“I understand the citizens that want the country to be referred to as the Republic of Macedonia in the international relations and do not want to negotiate with Greece. However, the integration into the EU and NATO has a great value and it is a substantial benefit for the citizens of this country and so the political leadership should invest great effort to acquire that benefit, and measure well what the loss and what the benefit would be if the present situation perseveres,” Serwer said.

Foreign and domestic political experts reiterated on Saturday once again that the Framework Agreement had a spirit of a constructive compromise and should serve as a constant source of inspiration to domestic creators of political debates and to the resolution of interethnic issues.

The investor of the residential complex Cosmos, MP Fijat Canoski, appealed for a meeting with Gazi Baba Mayor Toni Trajkovski but he refused Wednesday the invitation for a debate.

“I see no reason for holding public debates that you are inviting me to given that you avoided all forms of institutional dialogue, failed to inform us on your activities although being responsible to do so, refused to accept official acts of communication and took action in breach of laws,” he said in his reply to Canoski.

Mayor Trajkovski sees no rational reason for a debate outside institutions for that form of communication “will lower the level of social debate.” The mayor believes that such a debate would be a “needless drama effect” that produces nothing productive and moreover is pointless for having no institutional backing or effect.