The Greek coalition government’s junior partner, right-wing Defense Minister Panos Kammenos, on Tuesday again expressed his small populist party’s opposition to use of the term “Macedonia” in any solution to resolve the decades-old fYRoM “name issue”.
The poll-trailing Tsipras government resurrected talks with the new coalition government in Skopje this year over the “name issue” in a very prominent manner.
“We will try and block, in any way possible, the use of the name Macedonia … the Independent Greeks (the AN.EL party) will not accept Macedonia or any derivative (of the latter),” the combative defense minister told a breakfast-time current affairs program.
Kammenos, whose small AN.EL party squeezed into Parliament on a virulently anti-bailout and anti-Europe campaign plank only to join first-past-the-poll SYRIZA in a “strange bedfellows” coalition government, said any proposal necessitates a revision of fYRoM’s constitution. He also opined that this prospect can only be achieved with snap elections in the neighboring country and also said main opposition New Democracy (ND) party would have to vote for a proposed solution brought to Greece’s parliament.
Kammenos, who has served as a Parliament deputy since the 1990s, was expelled from ND.
Greece and international organizations recognize the small land-locked country in the middle of the southern Balkans as the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (fYRoM), while many other countries use the constitutional name, “Republic of Macedonia”.
He also insisted that two Greek servicemen held in pre-trial detention in Turkey, for allegedly straying into that country’s territory, are “hostages”.
“They have been held in a maximum-security prison in Edirne without charges (filed against them) … Greek soldiers are European and NATO military personnel,” he said.
