As a Greek myself, I can understand some of Anaxagoras’ concerns. It is true that most of the Greek population is very sensitive about the “Macedonia issue” but this is not a brand new problem. It has been around since the Tito years but it got intensified after the collapse of Yugoslavia.

I don’t want to go into deep political analysis right now but I can at least say that Greece failed to tackle the issue effectively on more that one occasions. And of course, the recent recognition of FYROM as “Macedonia” by the Bush administration is not out of the blue. The Greek PM knew about it. But enough of that.

Now, if the people of FYROM want to call themselves Macedonians that’s perfectly OK. Geographically speaking, they do live in a part of Macedonia, so in a sense they are Macedonians. MACEDONIA IS A GEOGRAPHICAL TERM so anyone living there can call himself/herself Macedonian. But that does not mean that they are descended from Philippos and Alexander the Great (as most of today’s Greek Macedonians but that’s another story).

For those truly interested, the historical facts provide all the information needed to draw the conclusion that the Macedonians were a Greek tribe. A tribe so different from the southern Greeks of the time in so many ways (mainly political) that led the latter to call them “barbarians”, “backward”, etc. What our Slav neighbours seem to forget is that the Slavs entered the Balkan peninsula in the 6th century AD. But of course, this is Greek propaganda! *S*

I would like to finish by saying that nobody should blame or hold responsible a whole nation for the actions of its government.