The message from Bulgaria and its new PM that they will be a source of peace sounds a bit militaristic, since the alternative is a source of war, and we are in some sort of a “cold war” with Bulgaria because it blocks Macedonia’s progress toward the EU, Aleksandar Nikolovski, Vice-Chair of VMRO-DPMNE, told TV 21 on Friday.

“And that’s not all. We also heard two different messages referring to the same phone conversation. The Bulgarian Government’s statement call for an immediate adoption of the constitutional amendments, while the Macedonian Government’s one features general phrases about friendship, good neighborly relations, therefore someone is lying, the statements just can’t differ to that extent”, Nikolovski said.

Nikolovski pointed out that Bulgarian demands have no relation to the EU criteria whatsoever.

“The question here is are we talking about the EU criteria at all. I have always  insisted on full application of the EU criteria, since our goal is an efficient judicial system and economic welfare. Bulgarian problem, however, is that they have no remarks regarding the criteria, but regarding the Macedonian identity, a condition none of the previous EU membership candidates had.

Bulgaria wants to turn this situation into an endless story, Nikolovski continues, constantly repeating the mantra of “just this one more concession, and that’s it”. We’ve been hearing that since we accepted the idiotic abbreviation FYROM in 1993. Our lives passed listening to “just one more” for the last 30 years, Nikolovski said, reiterating his party’s position that there will be no constitutional amendments under Bulgarian diktat.

“The constitutional amendments procedure has three phases, and it won’t even start, because we are going to block it in the first phase”, Nikolovski explained.