SKOPJE, SEPTEMBER 4, 1995 (MIC)
James Perdue and Christopher Hill, members of the U.S. negotiating team for Bosnia and Herzegovina paid Macedonia a short visit on Friday and met with President Gligorov, at their request.
After meeting with Gligorov and Foreign Minister Stevo Crvenkovski they gave a short statement, in which they said that: "As part of the general activities, we wanted to consult your President, who is a very important figure in the region, and inform him about what we are doing so he can help with his opinion."
German Foreign Minister Klaus Kinkel sent out a call last week to tackle the issue of resolving the Macedonian-Greek problem.
U.S. peace negotiator Richard Holbruk will have a short meeting with Greek Prime Minister Andreas Papandreou and Papoulias in Athens today. Beside questions linked with B&H, the discussion is also expected to bring up the Macedonian question and the tense relations between Macedonia and Greece.
Otherwise, the U.S. negotiating team, led by Assistant Secretary of State Richard Holbruk will be staying in Skopje today.
During their stay, the members will be received by President Kiro Gligorov and Foreign Minister Stevo Crvenkovski.
The vice-president of the Macedonian Parliament Tito Petkovski took part last week in the UN debate on the functioning of this organization. He promoted the use of preventive diplomacy in the resolution of world problems. As an illustration, he pointed out the example of Macedonia, where preventive diplomacy has given positive results.
"CITIZENS' PROJECT FOR HISTORICAL INTER-ETHNIC AGREEMENT"
The former member of the SFRY presidency from Macedonia and special envoy of President Gligorov to the U.S. Vasil Tupurkovski made a critical assessment of the Macedonian policy of "equidistance" and the resolution of the Albanian question, in the interview for the Saturday issue of "Vecer."
"Now you see him, now you don't. And, literally as a rule, his every next appearance causes reactions in the public. Regardless of whether it's a question of expressing political stances or presenting scientific facts from the field of Macedonia's ancient history. The once most popular Macedonian politician Vasil Tupurkovski - the renowned "Cile nacionale," today - an "ordinary" professor at the Faculty of Law in Skopje, returned to Macedonia this summer, after a several-month long stay in the U.S.A.," "Vecer" writes.
"The policy of equidistance is conservative in its essential contents and is far from able to incorporate Macedonia's real interests on a foreign-political plan," Tupurkovski said.
"It doesn't aim toward active cooperation, but distancing and defensiveness. I am convinced a modern, pragmatic approach suits us better, an approach which could be called real- policy. In that context, unlike closing up, which is, in the long-run, a product of the slow democratic processes in our country, active cooperation with those neighbors would place us in a position to contemplate alternative solutions."
Among the rest, Vasil Tupurkovski dismissed speculations that he is strictly in favour of regionalization of the Macedonian foreign policy. "Our incorporation into the European system will nevertheless be a matter that will have to waif for a while. Not because the Europeans don't want Macedonia, but because other objectively complex political, economic, developmental and social processes of building on a satisfactory level of compatibility with the developed part of Europe are in question. The long-term feature of this process, provided we think rationally, should compel us to cultivate our foreign- political concept actively and creatively. In this sense, the regional interests objectively gain in weight and precisely according to best the European experience, can play a role in speeding up the process of Europeization of our international position.
The priority of our regional surroundings would effectively bring us closer to a more solid European position, i.e. place in Europe. Its satanization could cloud the essence of the offered viewpoint, and in the final run, it carries a real danger to transform Macedonia's objectively unavoidable European position into a naked verbal concept."
In relation to the Greek-Macedonian question, Tupurkovski gives the advantage to a broad citizens' political consensus.
"As citizens, we have the indisputable right to know what's going on in negotiations and the right to have a decisive influence on the conceptualization of our negotiating platform," Tupurkovski believes.
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