Prime Minister Hristijan Mickoski said that he is not going to enter into negotiations with Bulgaria just to say that he’s participating in them, but to achieve success. In a Kanal 5 interview, Mickoski said that Macedonia wants a solution that will guarantee that Macedonia’s EU accession talks won’t be “bilateralized”, or used by Bulgaria to impose a long list of historic and other demands.

We can have the European Union as referee. The Presidency of the EU is inviting us to Budapest to resolve all our disputes, not in stages, but to tackle all of them, and to remove further obstacles and avoid bilaterization of the process. We can begin right now, said Mickoski. Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, whose country holds the EU rotating Presidency, offered to mediate between Macedonia and Bulgaria during a recent visit to Ohrid.

Mickoski warned that if Macedonia changes its Constitution now, as Bulgaria demands, and adds the Bulgarian community to the Preamble, it can easily face new Bulgarian historic demands in six months.

We must be good neighbors, but their demands need to be objective and not bilateral. If we keep attacking each other with arguments from the Middle Age, we will never get our of this mire. If we have objective obstacles, resolving them can only improve us. But the problem are the subjective obstacles and the bilaterization, Mickoski said.

He added that the thorny historic issues, such as the nationality of VMRO leader Goce Delcev, who Bulgaria claims as her own, are not something he can compromise on. “For me, Goce Delcev is a Macedonian leader and a historic figure, a Titan of the Macedonianness. He may be something else for them. Let’s see how many songs, names, stories about Goce can be found there, and how many here, with us. Let’s see who he really was. The wisdom of the people is doubtless”, Mickoski added.