map from theodora.com
Greece to veto Macedonia Nato bid
By Malcolm Brabant
BBC News, Athens
Greece says it is almost certain to veto Macedonia's bid to join Nato, following Macedonian portrayals of the Greek prime minister as a Nazi.
The two countries are also in dispute over the name "Macedonia" for Greece's northern neighbour.
Time is running out for a solution before the Nato summit in Bucharest, which opens on Wednesday evening.
US President George W Bush had hoped to invite Macedonia to join Nato, along with Albania and Croatia.
Athens is deeply offended by posters that have appeared in Skopje, which have the swastika superimposed on the Greek flag, as well as a magazine cover which depicts Prime Minister Kostas Karamanlis as an SS officer.
And the Greeks feel insulted by recent images of their neighbour's prime minister laying a wreath by a flag showing a map of Greater Macedonia, which includes parts of Northern Greece.
Territorial claims
Greece's foreign minister, Dora Bakoyannis, says the dispute is not just over a name.
She says the government in Skopje regards the Greek province of Macedonia as occupied territory and has refused to remove such claims from textbooks speeches, maps and national documents.
Athens and Skopje have failed to reach an agreement on a new name for the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, and Greece's stance remains - no deal, no invitation.
Greece is under huge pressure to back down.
The Americans say a dispute over who are the descendants of Macedonia's legendary king Alexander the Great cannot be allowed to derail Nato's expansion.
Other Nato allies are worried that closing the door on Skopje could lead to the break up of the country along ethnic lines between Slav Macedonians and the Albanian minority.
But compromising on what most Greeks regard as an unsatisfactory name would be political suicide for the Conservative government of Mr Karamanlis, and so the use of Greece's veto looks inevitable.
Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/europe/7326017.stm
Published: 2008/04/02 10:54:59 GMT
© BBC MMVIII
Skopelos and Virgin
-by Skorda
when first you see it
across the water,
rising round and new above the mountain.
Open your mouth and swallow
while youth holds its roundness near,
and you are running fearless in the dark.
Hold it inside, it is still warm
and you will need its light,
there, inside you.
Down the road of time, somewhere
after you’ve aged, traveled,
Explored, discovered.
And the dust around your doorway
has been pounded hard and smooth under your feet.
When you find yourself growing weary and bored,
when your eyes see only ruins,
and your heart is empty.
You may believe, in your exhaustion,
that this is truth, at last.
That the mystery has unraveled,
leaving no wilderness to explore or tame.
All secrets have been shared,
the frontier has dissolved.
Know then, with these thoughts,
you have been swallowed.
The warm belly of the beast
comforts with confining darkness
and lulls with rhythmic sounds
Murmuring to you,
Curl up and sleep,
just go to sleep.
Shake your head,
stretch your legs,
do not sleep now.
Remember what you know.
You swallowed the moon,
you hold it inside you.
Not as a magpie hoarding shiny things,
or wearing the moon for beauty
or bartering the moon for wealth.
You swallowed the moon for this moment.
When you will walk to the water’s edge,
open your mouth, release the moon
and let its light build you a pathway
across the wine dark sea.
©Skorda 2008
Wednesday, April 2, 2008
BBC news: more on FYROM
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