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[Ivanov] pointed out Russian consternation with double
standards used by the West for the language issue in
Macedonia, whose ethnic Albanian community accounts
for a mere 20 percent of the total population, and in
the post-Soviet Baltics, where Russian speakers'
percentage is spectacularly greater. None of those
countries has ever been reproached for restricted use
of the Russian language, and they are welcome to join
the European Union and NATO....



July 19,2001, Thursday    

RUSSIA'S FOREIGN MINISTER WARNS AGAINST PROVISOS
IMPOSED ON MACEDONIAN GOVERNMENT

ROME, JULY 18, 2001. /RIA Novosti correspondent Igor
Poushkarsky) -- Macedonia has a lawfully elected
democratic government, and whatever provisos imposed
on it are inadmissible when serving the interests of
particular forces, especially such whose activities
violate available understandings, Igor Ivanov,
Russia's Minister of Foreign Affairs, emphatically
said following today's conference of the international
contact group for former Yugoslavia. 

The conference gathered the Foreign Ministers of
France, Germany, Italy, Russia, the U.K. and the USA. 

As Mr. Ivanov said to newsmen afterwards, the
conferees had focused attention on the Macedonian
issue in the context of negotiations underway between
the government and Albanian ethnic minority spokesmen.
The language issue is now in the foreground of the
talks as ethnic Albanians insist on an official
bilingual arrangement for Macedonia. 

If the government is forced into related concessions,
they will breed a dangerous precedent, warned Igor
Ivanov as he called to regard all current Macedonian
developments in the context of their tentative
influence on other Balkan countries. 

The minister pointed out Russian consternation with
double standards used by the West for the language
issue in Macedonia, whose ethnic Albanian community
accounts for a mere 20 percent of the total
population, and in the post-Soviet Baltics, where
Russian speakers' percentage is spectacularly greater.
None of those countries have ever been reproached for
restricted use of the Russian language, and they are
welcome to join the European Union and NATO, said Mr.
Ivanov. 




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