Veniselos: Greece former Otoman province, is an insult and mockery

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Greek foreign minister: Statement that Greece should be called Former Ottoman Province is an insult and mockery

23 October 2013 | 10:01 | FOCUS News Agency

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Athens/Skopje. “Statement that Greece should be called Former Ottoman Province is an insult and a mockery. This will not help for the process of the name issue negotiations,” said Greek Minister of foreign Affairs, Evangelos Venizelos, writes Macedonian Dnevnik daily.
In a commentary on Macedonian Prime Minister Nikola Gruevski’s statement about the Former Ottoman Province of Greece (FOPOG), the Greek top diplomat said that it was probably some kind of a lapsus and not a political statement. He upheld the Greek position on a geographic term before the name Macedonia and that official Athens would not lose ground on its stand.

Macedonian Utrinski Vesnik daily, on the other hand, published a material titled “Venizelos: Good climate is not established through insulting statements”.
The Greek foreign minister said that insulting political statements did not help for a change and improvement of the tense climate between Macedonia and Greece.

Speaking at a press conference at the head office of the Greek foreign ministry Venizelos stressed he hoped that the recent statements of the Macedonian Prime Minister about the alternative analogical name for Greece, was only an unfortunate lapsus, the newspaper writes.

“It is of great importance to change the climate but this cannot be achieved with insulating statements, such as the one that Greece should be called Former Ottoman Province. This is an insult to the process and decisions of the United Nations and I am really sorry for this, even if it really was an unfortunate lapsus and not a political statement. I really hope that it was a lapsus,” the Greek minister remarked.