The Skopje daily Dnevnik this week reported that the foreign minister of the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (FYROM), Nikola Poposki, met with Greek Foreign Minister Nikos Kotzias in Riga, on the sidelines of a two-day EU Foreign Ministers meeting focusing on the Ukraine.

The newspaper said the two officials expressed diametrically opposite positions on the long-standing “name dispute” and other issues, but both agreed that there was mistrust on a political level.

“The lack of trust on a political level is real. For us, it is based on decades of obstructions, violated agreements and blockades. For them, it is a result of the negative campaign that creates mythological fear. Nowadays, they are hostages of the past,” was the view by the neophyte state’s FM.

While Greece may be still be in the midst of a punishing recession and a state cash crunch, the land-locked ex-Yugoslav constituent to its north is engulfed in a serious political crisis, as the opposition accusing the VMRO government of “industrial scale” wiretapping on 20,000, including on the government’s … own ministers!