Following his meeting with Prime Minister Dimitar Kovacevski in Rome, Bulgarian Prime Minister Kiril Petkov said that his country won’t succumb to provocations meant to increase tensions and will not be bound by preset dates to resolve the dispute.

We did not bind ourselves to any deadline. We only committed ourselves to maintain the good tone between us and that the Foreign Ministers continue to work with each other. I expect that in the coming weeks and months various groups that don’t want good neighborly relations between Bulgaria and Macedonia will try to create various provocations, Petkov added.