Media reports on December 4 2008 quoted Greek foreign minister Dora Bakoyannis as having said that talks between Athens and Skopje in the long-running dispute over the use of the name Macedonia would resume this month.

Bakoyannis, speaking after the Nato summit in Brussels, was reported as saying that Athens' representative Adamantios Vassilakis would meet his counterpart from Skopje, Zoran Jolevski. No date for the resumption of talks, which underwent a hiatus when Macedonian president Branko Crvenkovski fired Skopje's previous negotiator, Nikola Dimitrov.

Jolevski, formerly Macedonia's ambassador to the United States, will be accompanied on the negotiating team by Dimitrov and the head of prime minister Nikola Gruevski's office, Martin Protuger.

Skopje and Athens are locked in a prolonged dispute over the use of the name "Macedonia". Greece objects to the former Yugoslav republic using the name, saying that it is historically inappropriate and implies territorial claims on northern Greece.

Efforts to mediate the dispute have proved fruitless, with Macedonian prime minister Nikola Gruevski taking a hard-line approach and attempting to introduce other issues into the dispute, while Greece has blocked Macedonia's Nato aspirations and says that it will do the same with its EU hopes unless the dispute is resolved.

On December 4 2008, Balkan Insight, quoting state agency MIA, reported from Skopje that Gruevski had said that Greece was doing everything it could to avoid a deal in the name dispute.

The previous day, Athens had called on Skopje to be more constructive. Greece argued it has strong political will to resolve the name dispute with Macedonia, but blamed Skopje for the current deadlock.

It is wrong to think that if Skopje makes concessions on the issue of Macedonia's name, Athens would respond by retreating on the matter of Macedonian identity, Gruevski argued at a local debate in Skopje.
 
According to all signals, "Greece is not even thinking to retreat in the part on identity," Gruevski alleged. "If Greece does not intend to retreat at all, then why should we show some kind of servility in retreating on the issue of our name."
 
Skopje claims that for a settlement to be reached there must be guarantees that the Macedonian identity including the language, will remain referred to as Macedonian.
 
On Wednesday, Nato foreign ministers reiterated the conclusions of the Bucharest Summit, saying that Macedonia will enter Nato only after settling the dispute with its southern neighbour.