An invitation should be extended to Macedonia to join NATO and negotiations should be launched for the country to become a member of the EU, urged Nikola Gruevski on Thursday.
“Macedonia has been at bay from joining NATO and the EU for far too long. Greece is blocking start of EU negotiations and an invitation to NATO for far too long. Back in 2008, Macedonia had met conditions for getting a NATO invitation, still the country was not given an invitation. The next year, in 2009, the European Commission had given a recommendation for the EU to start membership talks. 7-8 years have passed since then and Macedonia is still being kept at bay from NATO, which is not good,” the VMRO-DPMNE leader told reporters while on tour in the municipality of Resen.
Gruevski called on NATO and EU countries to launch negotiations in line with the 1995 UN-brokered agreement.
According to him, there is no obstacle preventing talks from being launched, whereas the name issue with Greece should be resolved simultaneously with the negotiation process.
“A NATO invitation should be extended at once and talks should be launched to join the EU this year. It will inject a fresh impetus, fresh energy, and I believe many of the negative developments that had taken place would have never happened if we had joined NATO in 2008 and if we had started negotiating with the EU in 2009. There would have been a far better course,” Gruevski noted.
