The agreement with Bulgaria will still change. After a month of denial, the government finally confirmed that it would agree to Bulgarian demands regarding the language, history and Macedonian minority in Pirin Macedonia.
After Prime Minister Zoran Zaev acknowledged that there would be an annex to the Agreement with Bulgaria, this was now confirmed by Foreign Minister Bujar Osmani, who said that some issues needed to be clarified.
As if the current joint historical commission formed to resolve historical issues was not enough, now, as Minister Osmani announced, new working groups will be formed between the two states for these additional changes.
During my visit to Sofia, we discussed all issues, the differences in the expectations from the agreement. We concluded that there are differences in our expectations from the agreement. We agreed to form working groups from the two Ministries of Foreign Affairs that will discuss on a daily basis regarding the different interpretations of certain solutions, Minister Osmani said yesterday.
According to the announcements, the changes should refer to the name of the country, the Macedonian minority in Bulgaria, the language and the history. The latest of all the requirements is for the name. Bulgaria asks us not to use the name Macedonia anywhere alone, because according to them it showed a territorial claim.
Further, following the example of the Prespa Agreement with Greece, Bulgaria demands, and the same was confirmed by the Prime Minister, that Macedonia must sign that it will not interfere in the internal affairs of their country. The hidden message behind this request is that Macedonia must give up the Macedonian minority in Bulgaria, but also confirm that it will not demand any rights for them, because it should be an internal matter of Bulgaria. The judgments of the Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg in favor of the Macedonians in Bulgaria will be in vain, when Macedonia gives up their rights and Bulgaria does not respect them.
Another requirement that will be clarified according to the Bulgarian requirements is that of the language. That is, Macedonia with the new changes will accept that it is an artificial language invented in 1944. In order to be able to sell that change in Macedonia, it will be defined as “the language of the state according to the constitutional name”, and the adjective Macedonian will go down in history.
Speaking of history, this will be the last blow to the Macedonian identity and nation. The issue of Goce Delcev and the Macedonian existence before 1944 should be resolved. According to the announcements, the Macedonian government led by Prime Minister Zoran Zaev will sign that Goce Delcev is Macedonian only in the regional sense, while nationally he is Bulgarian. There have been such announcements before, and the Prime Minister Zoran Zaev himself once said that there is no problem with Bulgaria considering Delcev as its own.
But, the blow here is that by giving up Goce Delcev and accepting that it belongs to Bulgaria, the Bulgarian demands will be accepted that the Macedonians did not exist until ASNOM, ie that they were Bulgarians until then, and only then Tito created us it as an artificial creation. This request radically changes the Macedonian identity that is built around the character and work of Goce Delcev as a foundation of the Macedonian struggle for statehood and independence.
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