Macedonia is taking Greece to the International Court of Justice (ICJ), saying that Athens's veto at the Bucharest Nato summit of an invitation being given to Macedonia to join the alliance was a "flagrant violation" of a 1995 bilateral agreement between the countries. The move is the latest twist in the long-running "name dispute" between the two countries, which was the reason that Greece issued the veto.

In a statement on November 17 2008 on the Macedonian foreign ministry website, Skopje said it had filed an application with the registrar of the ICJ "to bring Greece into compliance with its legal obligations" under the countries' bilateral interim accord of September 1995.

Greece refuses to recognise Macedonia under that name, with Athens saying that Skopje's use of the name is historically ill-founded and could be used to reinforce Skopje's territorial claims in northern Greece. United Nations-brokered attempts to resolve the 17-year-long dispute have failed thus far.

"Article 11 of the 1995 Accord obliges Greece not to object to Macedonia's application to join Nato," the foreign ministry statement said.
 
The statement quoted Macedonian foreign minister Antonio Milososki, as saying: "We have lodged the Application with the International Court of Justice for the sole purpose of protecting our rights under the Interim Accord.

"We have thought very carefully before bringing this case, but see no other way for justice to be done and our rights to be protected," Milososki said.

"We hope this action might encourage Greece to bring its actions into compliance with its international legal obligations, and that it might also encourage our two countries to reach a final settlement on outstanding issues in the spirit of good-neighbourliness and cooperation envisaged by the Interim Accord."

He said that Macedonia had "strong confidence" in the ICJ "to help us resolve this discrete legal dispute, noting that the Court functions fairly and efficiently and can also act speedily.

"We are not asking the Court to deal with other political issues, so that the dispute over the name is not the subject matter of our Application. We also want to stress that we remain strongly committed to all aspects of the Interim Accord, in particular to the process of negotiations with Greece, mediated by the Special Envoy of the UN Secretary General."

The Application requests the International Court of Justice:

"(a) to adjudge and declare that [Greece], through its State organs and agents, has violated its obligations under Article 11, paragraph 1 of the Interim Accord;

(b) to order that [Greece] immediately take all necessary steps to comply with its obligations under Article 11, paragraph 1 of the Interim Accord, and to cease and desist from objecting in any way, whether directly or indirectly, to [Macedonia's]  membership of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and/or of any other "international, multilateral and regional organizations and institutions" of which [Greece] is a member, in circumstances where [Macedonia] is to be referred to in such organizations or institutions by the designation provided for in paragraph 2 of United Nations Security Council Resolution 817 (1993)."
 
On November 17, AFP quoted Greek foreign ministry spokesman George Koumoutsakos as saying: "We were aware of this action before it manifested itself…we will take the necessary steps at a time of our own choosing."

From Skopje, a correspondent for Bulgarian news agency Focus said that Macedonian president Branko Crvenkovski had not been consulted about the application to the ICJ.

This was contrary to Macedonia's law on foreign policy, presidential office officials were quoted by Focus as saying.

Macedonian prime minister Nikola Gruevski and president Crvenkovski have long been at odds over the country's approach to the name dispute. There has been a long series of bitter exchanges between the two on the issue, and the decision by Crvenkovski to fire Skopje's negotiator in the name dispute, Nikola Dimitrov, caused a domestic political uproar. 

In the course of the name dispute, Greece has said that it would block any invitation to Macedonia to join the European Union in the same way that it did with the Nato invitation, unless the dispute was resolved. Greece's blocking of the Nato invitation was opposed by the United States, with the Bush administration having said that it wants to see Macedonia join the alliance.