Macedonia--a Region by Any Other Name Would Be Called a Country : Recognition: Greece blocks international status for a Yugoslav republic that identifies itself with the land of Aristotle and Alexander the Great.

It didn’t happen to any of the others--not Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Moldova, Uzbekistan, Croatia, Slovenia or Bosnia-Herzegovina.

Macedonia, alone among all the world’s newly emerged nations, has been denied international recognition because of its name.

Poorest and most overlooked of the six former Yugoslav republics, the now independent nation of Macedonia has been thrust into international headlines because neighboring Greece says Macedonia has stolen a name identified since antiquity with such renowned Greek Macedonians as Aristotle and Alexander the Great.

In late June, the 12-nation European Community backed member Greece’s insistence on a name change by declaring that it is ready to recognize the new country but only “under a name which does not include the term Macedonia.”

The Macedonian Parliament, not yet a year old, immediately rejected the EC’s decision, blamed Macedonia’s national government for the EC demand and handed it a vote of no confidence. On July 7, the fledgling Macedonian government fell. President Kiro Gligorov had to reconstitute it.

“You take away my name, you take away my soul,” says Ljubica Z. Acevska, U.S. representative of the Republic of Macedonia, paraphrasing Shakespeare’s “Othello.”

Both Yugoslav and Greek Macedonians are extremely passionate about the name Macedonia. After the bloody Balkan wars of 1912-13, the large geographic region of Macedonia, whose history has been complex for centuries, was partitioned among Greece, Serbia (later to become part of Yugoslavia) and Bulgaria. Greece got more than half.

“We have always considered ourselves Macedonians, even before 1946. It is the identity of the people,” Acevska says in her Washington office. Yugoslavia’s southernmost republic was formally named Macedonia when Marshal Tito formed the modern Yugoslav state in 1946.

Macedonians, who predominate among the new nation’s 2 million people, are of Slavic origin and have inhabited the region since the 7th Century. The country is an ethnic mix of Albanians (21%), Turks and Gypsies.

To Greeks, the name Macedonia was, is and always will be Greek.

But Macedonia is more than a name. It’s a threat to Greece’s national security and the stability of the Balkan Peninsula, says Nicolaos Papaconstantinou, press counselor at the Greek Embassy in Washington.

Having a nation named Macedonia, he contends, may lead to a resurgence of Tito’s grand communist expansionist plan to create a “Greater Macedonia” by reuniting the Slavic and Greek areas of old Macedonia.

“This is not Greece’s paranoia,” says Papaconstantinou, a Greek Macedonian. “Great potential for instability exists in a new nation that is landlocked and multiethnic. Greece is concerned that the fighting in former Yugoslavia might spill over to the south.”

When largely agricultural Macedonia split from the rest of Yugoslavia last fall, it became landlocked. The nearest and best port is the Greek Macedonia’s Thessaloniki on the Aegean Sea.

Greece, which doesn’t oppose an independent nation by any other name, officially refers to its northern neighbor as the Republic of Skopje, the name of Macedonia’s capital.

“Why should they be so adamant if changing their name would give them a future? They should say, ‘What’s in a name?’ ” Papaconstantinou says. Greek Prime Minister Constantine Mitsotakis has offered to open Thessaloniki to Macedonian trade after the name change. A non-recognized nation cannot receive international economic aid.

“The name ‘Macedonia’ is a time bomb! Mr. President (Bush), you can defuse it,” read a recent full-page advertisement in the New York Times. The ad was placed by the Pan-Macedonian Assn. of the United States and Canada, an organization of people of Greek descent.

“The Macedonians have no right to touch this name. They want the name because they want to get out to the Aegean,” says Savas Lavasas, executive secretary of the New York-based organization.

The State Department says the United States will support any solution that is acceptable to the EC, Greece and Macedonia. “Greece is an ally and friend,” says State Department spokeswoman Margaret Tutwiler. “We take seriously Greece’s concerns regarding its security.”

“What is most unfair,” Acevska says, “is that Macedonia meets all EC requirements for international recognition. We achieved independence peaceably. At the EC’s request, we amended our own constitution, stating that we have no territorial ambitions. It’s not like Macedonia has started a war.

“It’s unrealistic to think that we could invade. Greece is larger, more powerful, a member of NATO. We’re underdeveloped. We’re just forming our own army. We don’t have any weapons.”

“Greece is employing bully tactics. It’s a terrible precedent to set--one country imposing a name on another,” says Janusz Bugajski, an expert on Eastern Europe at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. “Sooner or later, the EC position is going to have to soften. This limbo state is potentially very dangerous.”