BALKANS : Greeks Angered, but They Have Word for It--Fyrom

In contentious Greece today, national unity and regional divisiveness are summarized in a single invented word: Fyrom.

Anyone headed for Athens should brace for a preoccupation with Fyromic intentions and laments about the inability of Greece’s allies to understand the Fyromonian problem in its true dimension.

Fyrom, or FYROM, stands for the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia--the name by which Greece refers to its northern neighbor, although sometimes Greeks also call it Skopje, after its capital. The “S” is strongly heard, as in “Snarl.”

Greece says the landlocked new nation of 2.2 million people has no right calling itself Macedonia, an honored Greek name since the days of Alexander the Great.

International diplomatic maneuvering goes into high gear next week to end an extraordinary Greek trade embargo of Macedonia. Even Greece’s best friends say the embargo is improvident, incendiary for the powder-keg Balkans and embarrassing for Athens.

The embargo has driven an unprecedented wedge between Greece and its European Union partners at the worst possible moment: Greece is president of the EU (formerly the EC) for the first half of this year. Yet at the same time, opposition to Macedonia has united Greeks more typically cleaved by fierce political differences.

The socialist government of Prime Minister Andreas Papandreou, like its conservative predecessor, says the new republic has also appropriated Greek symbols and that, by envisioning a Greater Macedonia, its constitution threatens future stability in the northern Greek province of Macedonia.

Greece has fought against international recognition of Macedonia by that name since the republic declared its independence in 1991. It has been a losing battle: The largest half a dozen of Greece’s European Union partners have now recognized the independence of Fyrom, as the republic was provisionally named when it was admitted to the United Nations last April. So did the United States, last month.

That was the last straw: Large crowds demonstrated against Washington in the northern Greek port of Salonica. On Feb. 16, Papandreou proclaimed the embargo against Macedonia, which has lately been importing about 80% of its goods and fuel through Salonica, about 45 miles from its border.

Europe went ballistic. British Foreign Secretary Douglas Hurd came to Athens this week with a stern message from Greece’s 11 EU partners: “We understand the anxieties and concerns of Greece. . . . They do not, in our opinion, justify the Greek measures which harm the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia and in our view are illegal and certainly harm the reputation and the authority of Greece.”

Tilemachos Hytiris, spokesman for Papandreou, said in an interview that Greece resorted to the embargo from a sense of frustration.

“Another state wants not only our name but also our flag and symbols. In Greek eyes, that is not fair, not acceptable. . . . Yet all the pressure has come against us and nothing against them,” Hytiris said. “We took this measure to focus the problem; to tell our friends in Europe and America to help us find a solution. . . . If there is movement, we will rescind it (the embargo) tomorrow.”

Help, if not sympathy, may be on the way. Theodoros Pangalos, Greece’s minister for European affairs, ruefully told reporters on his return from Brussels this week: “I must admit our position (on Fyrom) is not understood by anyone.”

What complicates the Greek negotiating position is that its anti-Macedonia hard line is wildly popular. Outsiders may have difficulty grasping the reasons for Athens’ angst, but 83% of Greeks backed the embargo in one poll this week.

Although a quick settlement is in everybody’s interest, it may be difficult for Papandreou to find a way to relent far enough to allow Greece’s concerned friends to fashion one.