FYROM foreign minister rules out name change

Nikola Poposki, the foreign minister of the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (FYROM), has said that the conservative ruling party, the VMRO-DPMNE, will not accept any changes to the Balkan country’s constitutional name.

“I will once again repeat that VMRO-DPMNE will not accept any constitutional changes designed to change the constitutional name of the Republic of Macedonia, nor will it accept any ideas or proposals that will undermine the national identity, the particularity of the Macedonian nation, its language and culture,” Poposki told a party rally in the country’s capital, Skopje, on Sunday..

Speaking to a crowd of about 6,000 supporters, Poposki said that any proposed solution to the name dispute with Greece will be put on a national referendum.

Athens refuses to accept its neighbor as just “Macedonia” and the name dispute has frozen Skopje’s efforts to join NATO and the European Union. Some Greeks fear accepting that name could provide a basis for territorial claims by that country on a northern Greek province of the same name.