Macedonia seeks to join Nato as FYROM

MACEDONIA’S new prime minister suggested yesterday that his country could join Nato and the EU under a provisional name in order to end a long-running dispute with Greece that has blocked its membership bids.

Athens says the country should not call itself Macedonia because Greece’s northern province bears the same name, and it has vetoed Skopje’s attempts to become a member of the Nato military alliance since 2008.

Prime Minister Zoran Zaev, who took office on June 1, visited the Brussels headquarters of both the EU and Nato in a new push to resolve the row with Greece. “We will try all possible measures to move Macedonia to membership,” Mr Zaev said at a press conference with Jens Stoltenberg, Nato’s secretary general.

“With a FYROM reference we can become a member of Nato,” he added, referring to Macedonia’s official name at the United Nations, the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia. The EU also calls it FYROM, but Macedonia, which gained independence in the Nineties after the collapse of Yugoslavia, insists this is a provisional name. Greece claims a historical right to the term.