ND lawmaker grills gov’t over FYROM name talks
An MP with Greece’s main opposition party on Sunday questioned the government’s handling of name talks with the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (FYROM) after the Balkan country’s prime minister said Skopje is unlikely to agree to two of Athens’s key requests.
“After the comments made by Zaev to the MIA agency, that Skopje will not discuss changes to the constitution or a name for all uses, erga omnes, what exactly is the government of Tsipras, Kammenos and Kotzias negotiating?” New Democracy lawmaker Giorgos Koumoutsakos asked, referring to Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras and defense and foreign minister Panos Kammenos and Nikos Kotzias. “We are waiting for an answer at last.”
Koumoutsakos’s comment came a few hours after FYROM’s prime minister, Zoran Zaev, told MIA that while “we are quite close to a solution that will confirm the terms of identity, ethnicity and language,” Skopje is not likely to agree to Greece’s demands for changes to the country’s constitution and for an name to emerge from the negotiations to apply for all uses, both domestic and international.
