Macedonia Opposition Tapes Challenge PM's Patriotism Claims

The opposition Social Democrats' leader Zoran Zaev on Saturday presented what he said were taped recordings of officials that expose Prime Minister Nikola Gruevski's hypocrisy over Skopje's bitter dispute with Greece, which claims the name Macedonia as its own.

"While Gruevski was claiming that traitors and 'Sorosoids' [a derogatory name for government critics, alleging they are funded by financier George Soros] were plotting to change the constitutional name [of the country], at that exact same time, the government was the one bargaining with it," Zaev alleged.

In order to join the UN and sidestep Greece's opposition to its name, Macedonia in the 1990s agreed to a provisional refference, the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, FYROM. But Gruevski, who has promoted himself as a patriotic leader, has maintained this was offensive and accused the opposition of accepting it.

But the opposition said the tapes it released on Saturday proved this is a lie, and that Grueski's government was ready to make secret compromises with Greece, which insists that Macedonia's name implies territorial claims to its own northern province, also called Macedonia.

In one of them, the voice of what appears to be Gruevski and former Foreign Minister Antonio Milososki are heard mulling various name proposals amid ongoing negotiations with Greece, and whether they would be acceptable for the Macedonian public.

Gruevski's cousin, the recently resigned secret police chief Saso Mijalkov, is also heard joining the conversation.

Milososoki appears to explain to Gruevski and Mijalkov that they should seek a complex compound country name that would include a prefix with a "political connotation" like Independent, Sovereign or Democratic before the name...