Timothy Garton Ash and Macedonia

By David Edenden

This is the only excerpt relating to Macedonia in Timothy Garton Ash 's book below. What I did learn from this book is the role that Hans Dietrich Genscher played in trying to get Bulgaria not to recognize Macedonia. It is fascinating. Macedonians should really be telling their won story, not relying on Ash.

I did not expect that this book was the place to discuss the specifics of the EC (EU) policy regarding the Balkans, but it shows the moral flexibility of Ash in mentioning the outrage of Germany media regarding the independence of Slovenia and Croatia, but not to comment on the lack of outrage of German media regarding the independence of Macedonia, especially since the EC (EU) Badinter Commission recommended that only Slovenia and Macedonia qualified for independence!

(Note: Ash joins the many Balkan analysts who fail to mention the treatment of ethnic Macedonians in Greece and ethnic Kurds in Turkey. ) If Ash had decided to go down this road, then he would have to conclude that EC (EU) policy supports the cultural genocide of ethnic Macedonians in Greece and ethnic Kurds in Turkey ... not a topic one wants to discuss in polite company.

In Europe's Name: Germany and the Divided Continent
Timothy Garton Ash
Page 295, 396, Vintage (Paperback) 1994

In the immediate aftermath of German unification, the general Western hope of keeping together the so-called federal republic of Yugoslavia accorded both with Bonn's general wish for stability (order/peace) and with its specific concern not to countenance any bad example of republican self-determination which might "destabilize" the Soviet Union.

But this also changed in the summer on 1991. After Slovenia declared their independence, in the face of Serbian aggression, Hans-Dietrich Genscher, then still Foreign Minister, found himself confronted with a growing barrage of moral outrage and criticism from the media and politicians of all parties in Bonn. He then ran out ahead of his critics , and declared that Slovenia should be recognized as sovereign states. It must be done, he insisted on it; how could he - for whom human rights and self-determination were sacred - ever be thought to have thought anything else.

German diplomacy then devoted its considerable skills, and new muscle, to securing a "European" (that is, EC0 initiative for recognition. the task was intricate. to give just one small example: according to a credible source, Genscher at one point put heavy pressure on Bulgaria not (yet) to recognize Macedonia, although this was actually a very bold and constructive move by Bulgaria - in fact, almost the Bulgarian equivalent of Germany's recognition of the Oder-Neisse line.

Why did Genscher do this? Could it possibly to do with Greece, so often the joker in the EC pack, and now furiously opposing the recognition of Macedonia? could it, just possibly, be a deal: Germany would not (yet) support the recognition of Macedonia if Greece did not oppose the recognition of Slovenia and Croatia? Oh, brave new world!