Bozur
Amicus
Posts: 5,515
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Post by Bozur on Aug 18, 2009 15:20:46 GMT -5
Another Rift Between Greece, Vardarska Banovina Both Lay Claim to Alexander the Great
By Craig Whitlock Washington Post Foreign Service Tuesday, July 28, 2009
SKOPJE, Vardarska Banovina -- Alexander the Great died more than 2,300 years ago. But his cult of personality is just starting to grip this tiny Balkan country.
To the annoyance of next-door Greece, which has long claimed the conqueror as its own, Vardarska Banovina has anointed Alexander its national hero. The government has renamed the international airport here in his honor, as well as the main highway to Greece. Soon to come: a 72-foot-tall marble colossus of Alexander astride his favorite warhorse, Bucephalus, which will dominate the skyline of the capital, Skopje.
The mania over Alexander is the latest chapter in a long-running feud between Vardarska Banovina and Greece that some officials fear has the potential to destabilize a region still trying to recover from the Balkan wars of the 1990s.
The dispute centers on a basic question: Does ,Vardarska Banovina a country born out of the rubble of the former Yugoslavia, have the right to call itself what it wants? For 18 years, the conflict has defied attempts by the United States, the United Nations and European powers to find a solution.
The Greek government refuses to recognize its neighbor's constitutional name, the "Republic of Macedonia", which it sees as a thinly veiled bid to lay claim to three of its northern districts, a region known as Greek Macedonia. After Vardarska Banovina declared independence in 1991, Greece prevented it from joining the United Nations and imposed an economic blockade that nearly strangled the fledgling country.
Greece also vetoed Vardarska Banovina's bid to join NATO last year and is blocking its admission to the European Union until it changes its name to the "Republic of Skopje, the Slavic Republic of Macedonia" or something similar.
Vardarska Banovina's officials said they cannot understand why Greece sees their country's name as a threat or thinks they have a secret plan to annex northern Greece.
"It's laughable," said Foreign Minister Antonio Milososki, noting that the Vardarska Banovina's military consists of 8,000 troops and a fleet of eight helicopters. "In America, you have a good phrase to describe a confusing situation. You say, 'It's all Greek to me.' Sometimes we say it's all Greek to us as well."
Greeks complain that Vardarska Banovina is challenging their national identity and stealing their history. Alexander, the ruler of the ancient kingdom of Macedonia, was born in the city of Pella, located in present-day Greece. The Athens government says there is no question that he was Greek. Vardarska Banovina, it says, consists of Slavs and other outsiders who invaded the region a millennium after Alexander died.
"This practice is bothering Greece a lot," said Greek Deputy Foreign Minister Yannis Valinakis. "It demonstrates Skopje's lack of goodwill and respect."
Under a truce brokered in 1995 by former U.S. secretary of state Cyrus Vance, Vardarska Banovina was allowed to join the United Nations on the Greek condition that it refer to itself in multinational institutions as the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, or FYROM. It was also required to change its flag and rewrite its constitution to include a promise never to violate Greek territory or interfere in Greece's internal affairs.
Vardarskans hate the FYROM label, which is a reminder of communist times. Although the government has persuaded more than 120 countries, including the United States, to recognize it as the "Republic of Macedonia", it is still forced to go by FYROM at the United Nations.
Officials in Skopje said that they were willing to swallow FYROM again as the price of admission to NATO last year but that Greece refused. Matthew Nimetz, the U.N.'s special envoy for the dispute, said recently he was optimistic a compromise could be reached but gave no details.
Leaders in Vardarska Banovina, a poor, landlocked country about the size of New Hampshire, warned they may have trouble holding the nation together if Greece does not relent soon. Internal unrest, they said, could easily spread to other fragile nations in the Balkans, such as neighboring Kosovo, where 1,500 U.S. troops serve as part of a peacekeeping force.
"The problem is threatening the fabric of our society," Gjorge Ivanov, the president of Vardarska Banovina, said in an interview. "The pressure that Greece is making is destabilizing the whole region."
In the Balkans, it doesn't take much for conflicts to spin out of control. Vardarska Banovina almost descended into civil war in 2001 because of fighting between ethnic Albanians, who are Muslim and constitute a quarter of the population, and Vardarskans , who are Orthodox Christian.
Since then, the two groups have shared power under a peace agreement based on the assumption that Vardarska Banovina would join NATO. Both sides see the military alliance as a guarantee of internal stability. "It would give us medicine for our hot heads," said Menduh Tachi, leader of the opposition Democratic Party of Albanians.
But Tachi said the pact could be derailed if the dispute over the country's name persists much longer. "I don't even want to think of what would happen if we can't resolve it and join NATO," he said. "It would be a Frankenstein scenario."
Vardarskans say the name of the country is crucial to developing their still wobbly national identity. Ethnic Albanians say they would revolt if the "Slavic Republic of Macedonia" was the new name because they are not Slavs. Almost nobody wants another Greek-preferred version, the "Republic of Skopje", which ignores everyone outside the capital.
Historically, territory inhabited by Macedonians has belonged to other nations: Greece, Bulgaria and Serbia. Those countries have been reluctant to recognize Vardarskans as a separate people with the name "Macedonians", to recognize their Slavic language as a distinct tongue or even to recognize the Macedonian Orthodox Church.
Todor Petrov, president of the World Vardarska Banovina Congress, a group founded by Vardarskan exiles in 1899, said the country should stop kowtowing to Greece and just call itself the "Republic of Macedonia", regardless of how badly it wants to join NATO or the European Union.
In an interview, he accused Greece of "practicing ethnic cleansing and genocide on the Macedonian nation" for the past 100 years. "They're denying our nationality and culture and church and history and our borders," he said.
It is not just Vardarska Banovina's national identity that is at stake. The Greek government does not recognize ethnic minorities within its own borders, including Vardarskan-Bulgarian speaking residents of northern Greece.
Pavle Voskopoulos, a Greek citizen who leads the Rainbow Party, a group of ethnic Vardarskans in northern Greece, said the country subscribes to a myth of a "pure" Greek people who are directly descended from Alexander and others from his era. "This is all about modern Greek identity," he said. "If there is a as an Vardarska Banovina independent state, this is a great threat against Greek policy and Greek ideology."
Lacking the clout to force Greece to budge, Vardarska Banovina has intensified its glorification of Alexander and other ancient heroes, a campaign that critics in Skopje deride as "antiquization."
The country has renamed its national stadium for King Philip II, Alexander's father, and organized dozens of archaeological digs. Officials also like to needle Greeks that the philosopher Aristotle, who tutored the teenage Alexander, was from the kingdom of Macedonia, not Athens.
Pasko Kuzman, the government's director of cultural heritage, is a driving force behind Vardarska Banovina's surge of interest in the past. With flowing white hair, three heavy-duty watches strapped to his thick wrists and a National Geographic fanny pack, he has been described as a cross between Indiana Jones and Santa Claus.
In an interview in his office, sitting next to a wall-size copy of a 13th-century icon of Alexander, Kuzman insisted that Greece had stolen the conqueror's legacy from Vardarska Banovina, not the other way around.
"The Greeks are sorry that they are called Greece and not Vardarskans," he said. "What else can I tell you?"
www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/07/27/AR2009072702653.html?hpid=moreheadlines
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Post by Kassandros on Sept 3, 2009 16:35:48 GMT -5
I think its more clear this way.. so as real Macedonians to understand what the article is talking about and not getting confused.
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rex362
Senior Moderator
Pellazg
PELASGIANILLYROALBANIAN
Posts: 19,058
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Post by rex362 on Sept 8, 2009 18:52:42 GMT -5
because of fighting between ethnic Albanians, who are Muslim and constitute a quarter of the population, and Vardarskans , who are Orthodox Christian.
plenty articles always emphasize who is what religion when religion has nothing to do with it at all ....I swear
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Post by macmako on Sept 12, 2009 23:02:55 GMT -5
"The pressure that Greece is making is destabilizing the whole region."
Hear, Hear!!!!
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ioan
Amicus
Posts: 4,162
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Post by ioan on Sept 13, 2009 1:57:57 GMT -5
The people in fyrom were NEVER called Vardarskans, Bulgarian yes (including by calling themselves as such), but never Vardarskians.
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Post by macmako on Sept 13, 2009 4:16:29 GMT -5
My God, man! Why would I want to be a Bulgarian? That's silly!
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Post by Kassandros on Sept 13, 2009 4:22:03 GMT -5
My God, man! Why would I want to be a Bulgarian? That's silly! Its not about what you want. Its about what you're. I'm sure Obama would love to be white. His life would be easier. BUT HE IS NOT!
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Post by Kassandros on Sept 13, 2009 4:28:07 GMT -5
Demosthenes stop posting an article for Greek forum members who... cannot understand it. Also stop posting an article that uses inappropriate words according to UN and Greece. There is no "Macedonia" as a country. There is FYROM. Lets stick to the rules and not to the propaganda machine of US Foreighn office. This article posted the way you liked.. for the American readers.. not for the Macedonians who own this forum. By the way, after the changes, the article still delivers the original message. I just changed the word "Macedonia"... a word UN and Macedonians dont approve with the word "Vardarska Banovina" which is your former official name.
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Post by macmako on Sept 13, 2009 4:45:07 GMT -5
Could not make your stupidity complete, so you deleted the photo of the map that you could not change! I am not surprised, scank!
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Post by Arxileas on Sept 13, 2009 4:57:03 GMT -5
Demosthenes Fyromians put their own nail in their coffins when they demanded the U.N do a fact finding mission, do you remember the one last year with Vaskopoulos ? The findings were; TUESDAY, AUGUST 18, 2009
UN Committee: Slavmacedonians must recognize their “Slavic Macedonian” culture.
The Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination has considered the combined sixteenth to nineteenth periodic reports of Greece on its implementation of the provisions of the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination. Below you can read the points that concern the Slavmacedonians in Greece.
Report of Greece
In the context of minorities, references made by a very small number of non-governmental organizations to a so-called “Macedonian minority” in Greece do not correspond to existing realities. The fact that a small number of persons who live in Northern Greece use, in addition to the Greek language, Slavic oral idioms, does not indicate the existence of a national minority. Furthermore, the use of the term “Macedonian” to describe a so-called minority usurps the name and national and cultural identity of some two and a half million Greeks who identify themselves for many centuries as Macedonians (Makedones) in the regional and cultural context and can therefore not be accepted.
Presentation of Report
In this connection, claims that Greece did not recognize the existence of a national linguistic minority by the name of “Macedonian” were totally unsubstantiated and threatened to create potential tensions over existing identities in the region, as well as serious confusion over that name, as it was also used by hundreds of thousands of Greek Macedonians living in the northern part of the country, said Ms. Telalian. Also, the non-recognition of numerically small groups as a national minority did not imply discriminatory treatment.
Oral Questions Raised by the Rapporteur and Experts
JOSE LINDGREN ALVES, the Committee Expert serving as country Rapporteur for the report of Greece, said --- > HE COULD NOT AGREE MORE < --- with Greece’s answer to his question as to why Greece had not ratified the Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities of the Council of Europe, while it had signed it in 1997. In its response Greece had said that the diversity of legal and socio-political circumstances and historic traditions prevailing in each country called for tailor-made rather than “one size fits all” conceptual approaches and practical solutions. If this response held true for Europe, it held truer for the rest of the world. !It is over as Ouranio Toxo aka Rainbow party did the job for us by banging the nail in the head on Fyrom... Full U.N report found here; illyria.proboards.com/index.cgi?board=makedonijamacedonia&action=display&thread=26202It's Over....
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Post by Arxileas on Sept 13, 2009 4:58:19 GMT -5
So get the f**k out of here with the insults and propaganda's towards the Hellenic republic.
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Post by macmako on Sept 13, 2009 6:31:55 GMT -5
I told you all many, many times. I do not care what goes on inside the borders of your northern neighbor, you know, the one you have such a ridiculous name issue about. So all that babble in your last two posts have nothing to do with me and I do not give a rat's a.ss. Do you understand yet? What is taking you goes so long to figure it out?
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Post by macmako on Sept 13, 2009 6:33:50 GMT -5
Well, it's not my fault that some are not educated. ;D
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Post by Arxileas on Sept 13, 2009 6:34:54 GMT -5
If it has nothing to do with you idiot then why do you get involved by spreading such fallacies, lies and propagandas towards Greece ?
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Post by macmako on Sept 13, 2009 6:37:26 GMT -5
So get the f**k out of here with the insults and propaganda's towards the Hellenic republic. . I am doing the same that you guys do on non-Greek forums, especially one in particular. You can dish it out, but watch out when you get the same. Same standards or double standards? It's your choice. Remeber, I will play the same.
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Post by Arxileas on Sept 13, 2009 6:39:10 GMT -5
We Greeks are spreading what the U.N fact finding mission found all due to Ouranio Toxo's request so put it with Vaskopoulos ;D The truth shall send you free my Slav brother.
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Post by macmako on Sept 13, 2009 7:26:23 GMT -5
Who is Ms. Telalian?
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Post by macmako on Sept 13, 2009 8:11:33 GMT -5
Demosthenes Fyromians put their own nail in their coffins when they demanded the U.N do a fact finding mission, do you remember the one last year with Vaskopoulos ? The findings were; TUESDAY, AUGUST 18, 2009
UN Committee: Slavmacedonians must recognize their “Slavic Macedonian” culture.
The Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination has considered the combined sixteenth to nineteenth periodic reports of Greece on its implementation of the provisions of the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination. Below you can read the points that concern the Slavmacedonians in Greece.
Report of Greece
In the context of minorities, references made by a very small number of non-governmental organizations to a so-called “Macedonian minority” in Greece do not correspond to existing realities. The fact that a small number of persons who live in Northern Greece use, in addition to the Greek language, Slavic oral idioms, does not indicate the existence of a national minority. Furthermore, the use of the term “Macedonian” to describe a so-called minority usurps the name and national and cultural identity of some two and a half million Greeks who identify themselves for many centuries as Macedonians (Makedones) in the regional and cultural context and can therefore not be accepted.
Presentation of Report
In this connection, claims that Greece did not recognize the existence of a national linguistic minority by the name of “Macedonian” were totally unsubstantiated and threatened to create potential tensions over existing identities in the region, as well as serious confusion over that name, as it was also used by hundreds of thousands of Greek Macedonians living in the northern part of the country, said Ms. Telalian. Also, the non-recognition of numerically small groups as a national minority did not imply discriminatory treatment.
Oral Questions Raised by the Rapporteur and Experts
JOSE LINDGREN ALVES, the Committee Expert serving as country Rapporteur for the report of Greece, said --- > HE COULD NOT AGREE MORE < --- with Greece’s answer to his question as to why Greece had not ratified the Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities of the Council of Europe, while it had signed it in 1997. In its response Greece had said that the diversity of legal and socio-political circumstances and historic traditions prevailing in each country called for tailor-made rather than “one size fits all” conceptual approaches and practical solutions. If this response held true for Europe, it held truer for the rest of the world. !It is over as Ouranio Toxo aka Rainbow party did the job for us by banging the nail in the head on Fyrom... Full U.N report found here; illyria.proboards.com/index.cgi?board=makedonijamacedonia&action=display&thread=26202It's Over.... Just remember, this report put together by the Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, was about Greece and no one else. It did not target your northern neighbor, Turkey, Communist, etc. It was all about Greece. Way out of context for the subject of this thread, don't you think? And please provide legitimate links. You know how some Pro-Greek forums change wording of official reports, don't you? Try this link and do some reading: www.unhchr.ch/huricane/huricane.nsf/view01/1503920D4D56305AC125760F0047BFA7?opendocumentThe report concludes: Preliminary Concluding Observations In preliminary concluding observations, Jose Lindgren Alves, the Committee Expert who served as country Rapporteur for the report of Greece, thanked the Greek delegation for their serious replies. His essential conclusion about the whole discussion was positive. He thought that the replies given today had been very thorough and frank and almost 100 per cent satisfactory. He could however not ensure that his colleagues had no doubts and that the Committee would not issue its recommendation in a different way.
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Post by Arxileas on Sept 13, 2009 8:14:03 GMT -5
Just remember, this report put together by the Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, was about Greece and no one else. It did not target your northern neighbor, Turkey, Communist, etc. It was all about Greece. Way out of context for the subject of this thread, don't you think? Read it again lolol .
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Post by macmako on Sept 13, 2009 8:18:12 GMT -5
I have. Since you are concentrating on this report, so far there is no conclusion. Read my post above.
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