NATO’s Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg wasted no time on veiled and ambiguous statements during his visit to Macedonia. His message was blunt.
“Either you accept the deal [with Greece], then you can join NATO, or you reject the deal, and you don’t join NATO,” he told BIRN in an interview before leaving Skopje for Athens.
His visit comes amid a wider diplomatic offensive in support so the so-called name deal ahead of a referendum on September 30 in Macedonia.
Numerous foreign leaders, including Angela Merkel of Germany and Sebastian Kurz of Austria, are visiting Skopje, delivering messages of encouragement for a “yes” vote.
At the end of this month, Macedonians will vote to either support or reject the agreement reached in June between Skopje and Athens, which is designed to put the long-running dispute over Macedonia’s name to bed.
“This is the first time in 27 years that you have a real deal on the table. It is hard to imagine when that will happen again,” Stoltenberg said.
“This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to agree on the ‘name’ issue and join the international community; it is for you to say yes or no, no one can force you, that is your independent decision – but you have to take the consequences of your decisions.”
During his visit, Stoltenberg met the opposition VMRO-DPMNE party leader, Hristijan Mickoski, who has repeatedly condemned the agreement as a sellout but has stopped short of saying whether his party will take part in the referendum, delaying a decision until September 10.
Both Mickoski and President Gjorgje Ivanov, another staunch opponent of the deal, have released statements saying they told Stoltenberg they support EU and NATO integration – but find the name deal unacceptable.
VMRO–DPMNE, which held power between 2006 and 2016, has insisted it could have reached a better agreement.
But Stoltenberg sounded scornful of that claim. “If it was easy to get a better deal, why haven’t you achieved a better deal before?” he asked.
For more read the full of article at The Balkaninsight
