Foreign Minister Nikos Kotzias is in Skopje today, to discuss the settlement plans that Athens and Skopje have exchanged, in talks with his counterpart Nikola Dimitrov, FYROM’s Prime Minister, Zoran Zaev, and opposition party leaders.
After his first, one-on-one meeting with Dimitrov, there will be two-hour, expanded talks that will include the two countries’ diplomatic delegations, after which the two foreign ministers will hold a press conference to detail the progress on the naming issue in the talks.
Kotzias will then visit FYROM’s General Secretariat for European Affairs for talks with Bujar Osmani, the deputy prime minister for European affairs, which will be followed by the meeting with Zaev.
Kotzias and the Greek diplomatic delegation will also attend a function at the Greek Liaison Office in Skopje, in celebration of the 25 March Independence Day national holiday. Athens maintains a liaison office rather than an embassy in Skopje.
The Greek foreign minister will also hold meetings with FYROM’s parliament speaker, Talat Xhaferi, who belongs to the country’s very large (about thirty percent of the population) Albanian minority, and with the president of the ethnic Albanian DUI party, Ali Ahmeti.
Kotzias’ last meeting will be with the leader of FYROM’s main opposition VMRO party, Christian Mickovski.
