A flawed deal

The agreement on the name dispute that the government of Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras reached is a result of flawed beliefs and a total lack of understanding of the basic rules of negotiations.

Here, Skopje adopted the position “what is ours is ours and what is Greece’s is negotiable” – of course Greece came out holding the short end of the stick.

In my view the people of FYROM are basic Slavs who live in a piece of Macedonian land. They moved there many centuries after Alexander the Great. They have no relationship to Macedonian / Greek civilization, ethnicity, language or history.

A fair and realistic name could have been Slavo-Macedonia. With this name all the other issues would have fallen into their right form and place. Unfortunately, successive Greek governments have failed to successfully defend and protect Greek history.

Dr John Psarouthakis, of Ann Arbor, Michigan, is the founder and former CEO of JPIndustries, and author of “How to Acquire the Right Business.”