As more senior officials in Zaev’s Government remain silent on the Bulgarian ultimatum over Goce Delcev, it fell to spokesman Muhamed Hoxha to take questions from the press. Bulgaria yesterday officially warned Macedonia that there will be no NATO membership or EU accession talks, unless Macedonia accepts that VMRO legend Goce Delcev was an ethnic Bulgarian.

We hope that the committee that was created between the two countries on the basis of the treaty for good neighborly relations and friendship will find a solution to move forward to friendship and good neighborliness between our states, was Hoxha’s answer.

Foreign Minister Nikola Dimitrov, who was in Sofia during the Bulgarian move, pleaded with the hosts not to use ultimatums in their diplomatic relations with Macedonia, but was promptly told that the treaty he himself signed contains precisely a mechanism for Bulgaria to block Macedonia’s EU and NATO accession.