Macedonian President Stevo Pendarovski has been accused of serving Russian interests on Wednesday by Bulgaria’s former foreign minister Ekaterina Zaharieva while a Bulgarian MEP has been condemned for perceived threats against the Macedonian head of state.
Following the beating of Macedonian Bulgarian Hristian Pendikov in Ohrid, Sofia’s demands for constitutional change in North Macedonia to progress towards the EU, and with Bulgarian elections around the corner, the current spat has well and truly put relations on ice.
Two days ago, after a meeting of North Macedonia’s Security Council, Pendarovski announced that he had submitted a proposal to the government to restrict one MEP and several other persons from entering Bulgaria, who are suspected of being connected to Russian intelligence services.
“It is expected that an organised group will arrive in Skopje on 4 February to mark the anniversary of the birth of Gotse Delchev. The group will aim to disrupt security to destabilise the country and relations with Bulgaria,” he said.
The news did not sit well with Bulgaria.
“President Stevo Pendarovski does not protect the interests of his homeland but serves the politics of Serbia and Russia in the Balkans. With his statements, he hinders the development of relations between Sofia and Skopje,” said Zaharieva in an interview with Bulgarian news agency BGNES.
“Bulgaria must have a very definite and sharp reaction to the statement of President Stevo Pendarovski. Unfortunately, this is not the first time he has made sharp statements that do not help the development of bilateral relations,” commented Zaharieva.
She called a meeting of the parliamentary committee on foreign relations to hear the Bulgarian ambassador in Skopje, Angel Angelov.
Pendarovski did not name any Bulgarians, but the opposition Macedonian party, The Left, published a list of six people for Skopje to declare persona non grata.
Among them are MEPs Angel Dzhambazki and Andrey Kovachev, the leader of VMRO Krasimir Karakachanov, activists of the Bulgarian pro-Russian populist party “Vazrazhdane”, as well as the Bulgarian businessman Milen Vrabevski, who financed the Bulgarian club in Ohrid.
Dzhambazki then sparked outrage on social media by issuing perceived threats against the Macedonian president.
“What does such a ban mean for us?” Let me tell Stevo Pendarovski, called Stevo the Comintern, that in the past others tried to ban VMRO leaders from entering Macedonia, and the last such example was with the Yugoslav, Serbian king Aleksandar Karađorđević. If they try to ban me from entering Macedonia, let them look at history and learn from it,” Dzambaski told TV Nova.
Karađorđević was assassinated by a Bulgarian citizen during a 1934 state visit to France.
The Macedonian Ministry of Foreign Affairs reacted to the statement by condemning it and added it would be in contact with the Bulgarian Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
“In this case, the Ministry will also recommend to the President to react appropriately to his colleague, President Rumen Radev, and for this behavior, a notification and a request for fencing will be requested from the President of the European Parliament. Threats, statements of threats, announcements are an issue that the security authorities are dealing with, we expect them to take seriously the last statements of Dzambaski and make an appropriate decision about his limited access to the country,” reads the reaction.
(Krassen Nikolov | EURACTIV.bg, Alice Taylor| EURACTIV.com)
Source: euractiv.com
