Senator Dana Rohrabacher, who chairs the US Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on Europe, Eurasia and emerging threats, suggested the landlocked nation should be divided between neighbouring states. The 70-year-old said that “division” in Macedonia meant “they will never be able to live together in future”.| It's an interesting point and one that we've covered in the past here at the Burg. The FYR of Macedonia has an Albanian core in its west and a Bulgarian core in its east. It's a papered-together country. The region was fought over several times in the run-up to World War One, and it took Tito's considerable influence (and jackboots) to keep the region from blowing up after World War Two. There's a low level Albanian insurgency that wants to split off the western part, and the Russians (of course) have been meddling. |
A landlocked country in Southeast Europe's Balkan peninsula, the Repcublic of Macedonia is one of the successor states of the former Yugoslavia, from which it declared independence in 1991. It became a member of the United Nations in 1993, but as a result of an ongoing dispute with Greece over the use of the name "Macedonia", it was admitted under the provisional description the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia.
Mr Rohrabacher's comments echo a suggestion by Russian Foreign Minister, Sergey Lavrov. In 2015, he said that “ideas have been floated” about giving the Republic of Macedonia “to Albania, and another part to Bulgaria”.
Asked if Donald Trump would support his idea, Mr Rohrabacher said he “had influence” on US policymakers and his committee would hold hearings in the “coming months”.
His comments provoked a furious response from the Macedonian foreign ministry which accused him of inflaming "nationalistic rhetoric".
“His expressed views generated immense anxiety regarding Macedonia and the region,” it said in a statement. “They inflame nationalist rhetoric in the neighbouring regions, taking us back into the past. We believe that the US State Department will adequately remove any doubt about the stated positions and will affirm its policy towards Macedonia and the Balkans.”