Republic of Macedonia

Republika Makedonija
Република Македонија

(In Detail) ()
National motto: ..
Official languages	Macedonian and Albanian
Capital	Skopje
President	Ljupco Jordanovski (acting)
Prime Minister	Branko Crvenkovski
Area  - Total  - % water	Ranked 145th 25,333 km² 1.9%
Population  - Total (2003 est.)  - Density	Ranked 140th 2,063,122 81/km²
Independence	8 September 1991
Currency	Macedonian Denar (MKD)
Time zone	UTC +1 (DST, yes)
National anthem	Today Over Macedonia
Internet TLD	.MK
Calling Code	389

The Republic contains roughly 38% of the area and nearly 44% of the population of the geographical region known as Macedonia, the remainder of which is divided between neighbouring Greece (with about half of the total) and Bulgaria (with under a tenth). The lands governed by the Republic of Macedonia were known as the Province of Vardar before 1945.

From 1945 until its proclamation of independence on 17 September 1991, the Republic of Macedonia was one of the six constituent republics of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia.

Table of contents

1 Naming dispute 2 Languages 3 Recent history 4 External links 4.1 Official Government Sites 4.2 Other 4.3 Unofficial websites 5 Notes

Naming dispute

Following Macedonia's independence, the Greek government raised objections concerning:

• The name: Macedonia was claimed by Greece to be a Greek name, already in use for the Greek region of Macedonia.
• The flag: the sixteen-ray "Vergina Sun" star that was to appear on the flag was a symbol of the ancient state of Macedon, to which Greece claimed to be the sole heir. (For more on this, see Vergina.)
• The constitution: a reference in Article 49 to the Republic caring "for the status and rights of those persons belonging to the Macedonian people in neighboring countries, as well as Macedonian expatriates, assist[ing] their cultural development and promot[ing] links with them," which Greece interpreted as encouraging separatism among its own Macedonian Slav minority.

Given the long name, the state is often referred to as Macedonia colloquially and by non-Greeks despite the ambiguity of the term with the region of Macedonia.

The state's name remains a source of local and international controversy and shows that the political force is always dominating the international law. After the state was admitted to the United Nations under the FYROM name, other international organisations adopted the same convention, including the European Union, the European Broadcasting Union, NATO and the International Olympic Committee, among others. Most diplomats are accredited to the republic using the FYROM designation. The usage of each name remains controversial to supporters of the other. However, at least 40 countries have recognised the country by its constitutional name – the Republic of Macedonia, rather than FYROM. These include the Phillipines, Iran, Estonia, Malaysia, Russia, Pakistan, China, Bulgaria, Turkey, Croatia, Slovenia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Serbia and Montenegro, Ukraine, Belarus, Lithuania,the selfproclaimed Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus, and others. A permanent agreement on how the Macedonian republic should be referred to internationally has not yet been reached.

Languages

The mother tongue of some 1.4 million of the state's inhabitants is the Macedonian, a south Slavic language related to Old Slavonic. Prior to the Kosovo war of 1999, Albanian and Turkish were each spoken by about 250,000. There are an estimated 120,000 Romany speakers.

Recent history

The republic remained at peace through the violent ethnic conflicts which convulsed the former Yugoslavia's western republics, Bosnia and Herzegovina and Croatia, in 1991-1995 but the influx of an estimated 360,000 ethnic Albanian refugees from neighbouring Kosovo in 1999 threatened to destabilize the republic.

A brief armed conflict in March 2001 involving Albanian rebels in the west of the country ended with the intervention of a small NATO ceasefire monitoring force and government undertakings to concede greater rights to the Albanian minority.

On February 26, 2004, President Boris Trajkovski died in a plane crash.

From the CIA World Factbook 2000 / 2001.

• History of the Republic of Macedonia
• Geography of the Republic of Macedonia
• Politics of the Republic of Macedonia
• Economy of the Republic of Macedonia
• Demographics of the Republic of Macedonia
• Communications in the Republic of Macedonia
• Culture of the Republic of Macedonia (Music of the Republic of Macedonia)
• Transportation in the Republic of Macedonia
• Military of the Republic of Macedonia
• Foreign relations of the Republic of Macedonia

Official Government Sites

• Official Government website
• Ministry of Defense
• Ministry of Foreign Affairs
• Ministry of Culture
• Ministry of Finance
• Ministry of Economy
• Ministry of Transport and Communications
• Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Water Resource Management
• Ministry of Labor and Social Policy
• Ministry of Education and Science
• Ministry of Health
• Ministry of Local Self-Government
• Ministry of Environment and Physical Planning

• Organization for the European Minorities' reports on Macedonia
• UNGA Resolution
• Macedonian Heritage FAQ

• A website with general information about the state
• Photos
• History of Macedonia
• Falsification of the history of Macedonia