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Enough with the name of Macedonia!

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Athens

All these days we see a marathon of the greek government to achieve an agreement between herself and the Forme Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia over the name of this country. Both sides are willing to finish with the issue for different issues.

While FYROM wants to be invited to join the NATO and so it has to find a solution in order to avoid a greek veto, Greece wants to close an issue that provoked so many problems to her foreign policy. Even though from both sides many extremistes were declaring that Macedonia is Greek or Macedonia is Macedonian I believe that tha majority of the people in both sides clearly understand that the issue of the name is too trivial to cause such great problems. For Greece this story is like a greek tragedy while after so many years of indifference over the issue she faced a non convinient for her reality after the declaration of Macedonia as an indipendant state - even though all these years before, Greece recognized the Republic of Macedonia within the Yugoslavian Federation. I dont want to present the history of the dispute between the two countries. What is important now at this very moment of negotiation is not the name of FYROM. Greece finally understood that she hasnt a monopoly of the name Macedonia because of the ancient legacy. Nobody who knows history in this planet believes that the inhabitants of FYROM are connected to Alexander's kingdom. What we have to understand is that Macedonia is not something that belongs only to one people. Macedonia is rich of multinational coexistance and culture during the Byzantine and Ottoman era, where Serbians, Slavmacedonians, Bulgarians, Jews, Albanians, Greek and Turks lived together. So the name Macedonia means a lot of things to all of these people. So, FYROM has to accept a solution which of course involve the term Macedonia but with a remark that they are not the only Macedonians in the region. Every people in this planet has the right to self -determination so the Macedonians of FYROM. But this right must not insult other nations in order to co-exist in harmony. As a result in order to become a member of NATO and the EU, FYROM has to renounce any possible territorial claim over her neighbours (Greece and Bulgaria) something which is vital for the stability in the region.