Athens, 3 October 2021 (MIA) – North Macedonia’s President Stevo Pendarovski in an interview with Greek newspaper “To Vima”, conducted ahead of his visit to Greece on Oct. 5-6, talks about the Prespa Agreement, the country’s EU perspective and its relations with Bulgaria, the country’s cooperation with Greece as well as the agreement with Turkey, MIA’s Athens correspondent reports. Commenting the EU perspective and the Bulgarian veto, Pendarovski says the situation, unfortunately, is preventing the country from opening accession negotiations, even though it had already met all conditions. He also expresses hopes that the talks will continue with the new government in Sofia, stressing that any solution must be in line with the Friendship Treaty. “We will continue to act in a constructive way in our talks with Sofia. A solution to Bulgaria’s objections has to be in line with the Friendship and Cooperation Treaty of the two countries and abide by the right to self-determination of our nation and respect national identity and Macedonian language. We hope after the elections in Bulgaria, we will continue to have talks with the new president and the new political government,” said the head of state, In the interview titled “Implementation of Prespa [Agreement] is both international and internal commitment”, President Pendarovski stresses the importance of the Agreement for the two countries, saying the most crucial thing is that it has set the course for future relations and has proven to be a turning point in improving economic cooperating, taking initiatives in several areas, including security, defence, education, science and culture. “The Agreement is an excellent example for settling of bilateral disputes between two neighboring countries. It had allowed North Macedonia to become NATO’s 30^th member, one of the two strategic goals as part of its Euro-Atlantic integration process. It has been positively affecting our European integration since Greece now is one of our strongest supporters. The Prespa Agreement wasn’t easy for both countries. However, its importance and positive impact will become more evident in the coming years,” said Pendarovski. He added that as head of state he had supported not only the political decision for adopting the Agreement, but also its timely implementation. The President said the commission on textbooks has made progress with the two countries tasked with implementing the recommendations. In terms of the adjective “Macedonian”, the Agreement is clear, Pendarovski stressed, adding he personally has been encouraging all entities in the country to respect the provisions. The new name, he said, is already included in the Constitution, meaning that “accurate implementation is not only an international commitment, but also an internal legal commitment.” “The two countries should make progress in implementing the Agreement’s provision but also in implementing recommendations of the joint commissions tasked with the textbooks, trademarks, traffic signed. And more importantly, they should ratify the bilateral agreement,” Pendarovski told “To Vima”, MIA reports. Referring to the memorandums stemming from the Prespa Agreement, which are yet to be ratified in Greece, he said that ratification is key to promote economic cooperation. Pendarovski mentioned energy diversification calling it national goal. “The decision to join the Alexandroupoli project is a very important one we had made,” he said adding it is in line with the national energy policy and would serve as motivation to expand economic cooperation and connectivity of the countries. On the North Macedonia-Turkey defence cooperation, which stirred reactions in Greece, President Pendarovski in the interview said that the two countries have been fostering defence cooperation for years. “The signing of the agreement was nothing new,” he noted. According to him, the recent agreement is part of 20-year bilateral defence cooperation, which is no threat to the excellent military cooperation with Greece. “After signing the Prespa Agreement and joining NATO, we witnessed how cooperation between our defence ministries and armies has strengthened,” explained Pendarovski adding that North Macedonia chose Greece to sign air policing agreement with. “We plan to expand the cooperation in the future. The bilateral defence cooperation plan for 2021 contains 69 activities,” President Pendarovski told “To Vima”. President Pendarovski’s two-day visit to Greece is the first one of a Macedonian head of state.