Former minister of external affairs, prof. Denko Malevski, gave a statement in Sunday to Radio Free Europe. According to him, [FYROM] made the name issue with Greece "especially complicated by adding dimension of identity quarrel". He further goes to say that ...this happened after "walking to [classical] antiquity". The most relevant part of the interview is when Maleski states: "when liberal minds would live within our side of the border, they certainly wouldn't feel ashamed from their own Slavic language, and that their basic identity, just like the language, is Slavic, instead of establishing reference to variety of racist theories about antiquity and about some super-humans from which we originate".
The former President of The FYROM, Kiro Gligorov said: “We are Slavs who came to this area in the sixth century … we are not descendants of the ancient Macedonians” (Foreign Information Service Daily Report, Eastern Europe, February 26, 1992, p. 35).
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Also, Mr Gligorov declared: “We are Macedonians but we are Slav Macedonians. That’s who we are! We have no connection to Alexander the Greek and his Macedonia… Our ancestors came here in the 5th and 6th century” (Toronto Star, March 15, 1992).
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On 22 January 1999, Ambassador of the FYROM to USA, Ljubica Achevska gave a speech on the present situation in the Balkans. In answering questions at the end of her speech Mrs. Acevshkasaid: “We do not claim to be descendants of Alexander the Great … Greece is Macedonia’s second largest trading partner, and its number one investor. Instead of opting for war, we have chosen the mediation of the United Nations, with talks on the ambassadorial level under Mr. Vance and Mr. Nemitz.” In reply to another question about the ethnic origin of the people of FYROM, Ambassador Achevska stated that “we are Slavs and we speak a Slavic language.”
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On 24 February 1999, in an interview with the Ottawa Citizen, Gyordan Veselinov, FYROM’S Ambassador to Canada, admitted, “We are not related to the northern Greeks who produced leaders like Philip and Alexander the Great. We are a Slavic people and our language is closely related to Bulgarian.” He also commented, “There is some confusion about the identity of the people of my country.”
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In addition, the Foreign Minister of the FYROM, Slobodan Casule, in an interview to Utrinski Vesnik of Skopje on December 29, 2001, said that he mentioned to the Foreign Minister of Bulgaria, Solomon Pasi that they “belong to the same Slav people.”
