Foreign Minister Bujar Osmani said that he wants to seat an ethnic Albanian historian to the Committee that is negotiating historic issues with Bulgaria. The Committee is currently deadlocked over issues such as the ethnicity of Goce Delcev, with Bulgaria announcing it will block Macedonia from opening its EU accession talks unless it is satisfied with the outcome of the talks.

Appointing an ethnic Albanian would create closeness and would underline that the Albanians were an important factor when some issues were being resolved. Of course we are working on it and soon we will have a solution, Osmani said. The Committee is under tremendous pressure to approve the concessions Bulgaria wants, and obviously an ethnic Albanian member would be more ready to accept concessions than an ethnic Macedonian.

He was recently on a visit to Bulgaria which, as Prime Minister Zoran Zaev said, “did not go well”. Zaev and Osmani did not specify the problem and denied reports that Bulgaria wants constitutional changes in Macedonia that would reflect the Bulgarian origin of the Macedonian nation. Since then Bulgaria also raised the issue of the name “North Macedonia” which they fear may reflect on Bulgarian lands, and the Macedonian language, which Bulgaria does not recognize.