The Minister of Foreign Affairs and government Vice President Evangelos Venizelos will host the UN’s special representative Matthew Nimetz at 1pm today. Mr. Nimetz is on a special 3-day visit to Athens and Skopje, to help find a mutually-accepted solution to the naming dispute.
At present the talks between the two countries have reached a standstill, with PMs Gruevski and Samaras disagreeing on key issues in the dispute. Mr. Gruevski is trying to pursue a political dialog with Greece and to set up a meeting with Mr. Samaras, however Athens in hesitant.
Diplomatic sources are unclear as to Mr. Nimetz’ intentions or whether he has a new name proposal. The previous “Upper Republic of Macedonia” was deemed unacceptable by Greece, since the geographical designation in the name referred to the government and not “Macedonia”.
