Pendarovski: International Community Prevented Macedonia’s Partition in 2001

Stevo Pendarovski, who served as one of the Interior Ministry’s spokespeople during the 2001 conflict and later as national security adviser to Presidents Boris Trajkovski and Branko Crvenkovski, has spoken about the reasons why the idea of partitioning Macedonia was never implemented.

In an interview with “Fokus” three years ago, the former president said that opposition from the international community was decisive in the failure of the idea in 2001.

According to him, the Pentagon had concluded that an exchange of populations and territories could not be carried out without major bloodshed. The assessment predicted that the partition of Skopje would result in the highest number of casualties because the capital has the largest concentration of Albanians, with more than 100,000 residents.

Pendarovski recalled that VMRO-DPMNE opposed the country’s UN membership under the provisional reference in 1993, while even today it maintains that the Framework Agreement was unnecessary, despite having signed it itself. He questioned whether the country would be an independent state today had it not joined the UN.

The former president also asked whether a military solution in 2001 would have been a better alternative, at a time when the country was very close to an all-out war and the establishment of a border in Grupçin. According to him, VMRO-DPMNE is now repeating with the EU the same mistake it made in 1993 and 2001.

Referring to accounts from several participants in the developments at the time, Pendarovski said that the other side had not accepted the partition proposal because it did not want to receive such a small territory. Nevertheless, in his assessment, the international community’s opposition was decisive, he told “Fokus” in 2023, Zhurnal reports. (INA)