A high percentage of Macedonian citizens continue to support Macedonia's accession to NATO, but 65 per cent will not give up the country's name for accession, as insisted by Greece, shows an Institute for Democracy survey.
Sixty-five per cent of citizens, of whom 84 per cent Macedonians, 7.1 per cent Albanians and 8.9 per cent members of other ethnic communities, feel that Macedonia does not need to change its name in order to join NATO, shows the survey whose results were presented by the Vrijeme newspaper on Monday.
Asked how they would vote at a referendum on Macedonia's NATO accession, 80.2 per cent said they would say yes, 10.8 per cent were against, while the rest were undecided. Although still high, support for NATO accession nonetheless dropped from previous surveys, when it was 90 to nearly 100 per cent.
The latest survey was conducted earlier this month.
A Greek delegation unofficially visited Macedonia on the weekend. It was headed by former Ambassador Aleksandar Maljas, who told press on Sunday that if it accepted the new name, Northern Republic of Macedonia, and a proposal that the language and the nation remain named Macedonian, but in the Latin script, Macedonia would be given a date for accession negotiations with the European Union as early as in June.
