From: kiran@cs.utex.EDU (Mustafa Kiran)
Subject: An article about Macedonia in TIME (october 12, 1992)
Followup-To: soc.culture.greek,soc.culture.turkish
Keywords: time,macedonia,greece,bullying
Organization: University of Texas, Computer Science Department
Date: Fri, 9 Oct 1992 20:37:59 GMT


  The following is a very interesting article about Macedonia published in
  TIME. ( typed without permission).


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                  GREECE'S DEFENSE SEEMS JUST SILLY

                                   by 
                               Strobe Talbott

   in TIME, october 12, 1992
   page 64.. 
  
   GREECE IS REMINDING THE WORLD THAT IT TOO IS A Balkan country, the 
   inhabitant of a region where history often introduces hysteria. In 
   this policy toward the disaster zone that used to be Yugoslavia,
   Greek prime minister Constantine Mitsotakis is well on his way to
   deepening and widening the war there.

     When Slovenia, Crotia and Bosnia-Herzegovina declared independence
   and appealed for international recognition last year, Macedonia had 
   no choice but to follow suit. Otherwise it would have been swallowed
   up by Serbia.

     A commission of the European Community established criteria for 
   recognition, stressing respects for the rights of ethnic minorities.
   Macedonia passed the test. Its population is a mixture of nearly a
   dozen nationalities, but its political system is democratic and 
   pluralistic.

     The E.C. was quick to recognize the other breakaway republics 
   including Crotia, whose reegime discriminates against local Serbs. 
   But the community stiff-armed Macedonia. Why? Because Greece objects
   to the name and exercised a veto in the councils of the E.C. 
   Macedonia is the birthplace of Alexander the Great and the name of
   Greece's northern province. Therefore Athens thinks it has a 
   2,400-year-old trademark on the word.

     Last week the Greek Foreign Minister Michalis Papaconstantinou was
   in Washington, and I had a chance to ask him about this whole business.
   He maintains that for Macedonia to ``adopt a Greek name'' is a
   ``provocation'' that ``implies territorial claims against us.''

     Never mind that Macedonia's constitution explicitly disavows any such 
   claim. Or that its army consists of about 6,000 ragtag troops armed 
   with pistols and rifles, while Greece's is more than 25 times larger 
   and is equipped with tanks, heavy artillary and jet fighters. Or that 
   there is neither precedent nor justification in international law for 
   one country to tell another what it can call itself.    

     Partly because the Greek position is so preposterous, the suspicion
   persists that the complaint about the name camouflages a revival of
   Greece's own ageold expansionistic ambitions. Several European 
   governments have relayed to Washington reports that Mitsotakis has
   secretly discussed the partition of Macedonia with Serbia and perhaps 
   with Albania and Bulgaria as well. 

     Papaconstantinou denies this charge ``categorically: I have never 
   seen any document or heard anything of this sort. We want them 
   [the Macedonians] to exist  [as a separate state]; we want them as
   a buffer zone'' between Greece and Serbia. ``The authorities in Skopje
   [the Macedonian capital] can change their name to anything except 
   Macedonia,'' and that will remove ``a point of friction in the Balkans.''

     Another recent visitor to Washington -Jane Miljovski, a minister
   in the Macedonian government-offers a persuasive rebuttal: `` As 
   citizens of a newborn, almost defenseless nation, we are afraid that 
   if we can be bullied into changing our name, we will next come under 
   pressure to change our borders.''

     Privately, most Western officials acknowledge that Miljovski is right.
   Yet publicly the E.C. and the U.S. have, in effect, sided with Athens 
   on the ground that there are other, overriding interests at stake.

     As a member of NATO, which is undergoing a post-cold war identity
   crisis, and the E.C., which is trying to keep the Maastricht treaty 
   from unraveling, Greece has extra leverage these days on both sides 
   of the Atlantic. In the U.S. it has the additional help of the 
   powerful Greek-American lobby.

     To his credit, Mitsotakis is working to resolve the long-simmering
   dispute over Cyprus and reach a raprochement with Turkey. He keeps 
   hinting that if he budges on the Macedonian question , extreme 
   nationalists in the Greek parliament - where he has only a two-vote
   majority- will bring down his government and replace it with one that 
   will undo his welcome diplomatic initiatives.

     Meanwhile, under the pretext of complying with international 
   sanctions against Serbia, Greece is blockading fuel shipment to
   Macedonia. As a result, factories there have had to shut down; crops
   are rotting in the fields; ambulances are sitting useless in hospital
   parking lots. ``It's murder without bullets,'' says Miljovski.

     Economic strangulation will soon lead to social interest, which in 
   turn could ignite an ethnic conflagration worse than the one in Bosnia. 
   Because Macedonia has large Muslim minorities, civil war within that 
   republic is more likely than anywhere else to escalate into a religious
   and regional war that could end up pitting Greece against any number of 
   its neighbors, including Turkey. Where will the overriding interests
   of the U.S., the E.C. and Nato be then?

     Having heard out the Greek Foreign Minister, I'm prepared to give 
   him and Mitsotakis the benefit of the doubt on their motivation:
   they are not guilty of irredentism-a desire to recover lands lost long
   ago- but merely of PARANOIA and MYOPIA. The situation has all the makings
   of the tragedy, which Aristotle, another Great Macedonian who was 
   Alexander's teacher, defined as THE RESULT NOT OF WICKEDNESS BUT OF 
   FOOLISH PRIDE.
    
    TIME
    October 12, 1992
    Vol. 140 No. 15
    page 64...

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  Cheers,

  Mustafa Kiran

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|  Mustafa Kiran                                                         |
|  kiran@cs.utex.edu                                                     |
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