Macedonian Prime Minister Christian Mitkoski said that the Macedonian issue is not closed because the European Court of Human Rights has ruled that the rights of people with Macedonian identity are not respected in Bulgaria.
"It would be irresponsible and treacherous for me, as president of the Macedonian government, to ignore this and to withdraw servilely and half-heartedly, thinking that this will solve the problems. No, as long as I am alive and engaged in this work, I will fight for these injustices to be corrected in the 21st century. When I'm gone and not doing this work, then it's on the generations after me. But we must have an institutional trace that we fought, we did not leave the battlefield and we were not traitors to the Macedonian people and the Macedonian identity," Mitkoski said in an interview with MRT.
His words came after the Greek foreign ministry on 23 January described as a provocation the Macedonian prime minister's statement from New Jersey. The release stated that "the Prime Minister of North Macedonia in his statements in New Jersey, USA, spoke about the 'unresolved' and 'existing' Macedonian issue. "This statement is a challenge to Greece, trying to bring back to the forefront the issue that is resolved, as it is known, definitively and irrevocably," the ministry statement read.
"I wonder where they felt provoked because no one is mentioned in this statement of mine and I wonder why there is such a reaction", Mitkoski replied, adding that Athens' reaction was in response to its domestic political needs.
The Macedonian prime minister said he would not allow "to be provoked and for all this to be a process that has no end".
"My goal and my message are clear. As a prime minister it would be irresponsible and treasonous to the Macedonian people, to the Macedonian citizens to say that the Macedonian issue is closed in conditions where we are not part of the European family and we started way before maybe some member states that are there and this is an open issue," Mitkoski said.
According to him, the main reason the country has not yet managed to join the EU are bilateral issues, which should not be criteria and conditions. | BGNES
