Matthew Nimetz, the mediator appointed by the United Nations to resolve the dispute between Athens and Skopje over the use of the name Macedonia, has announced that the two sides will meet in New York for further talks on February 11 2009.

Athens will be represented by Adamandtios Vassilakis and Skopje by its recently-appointed chief negotiator Zoran Jolevski.

The New York meeting will be the latest in a long list of attempts to resolve the dispute. All compromises proposed so far have failed. Greece objects to Skopje using the name "Macedonia" for the former Yugoslav republic, saying that this is historically inappropriate and could be exploited to reinforce Skopje's territorial claims in northern Greece.

On January 14 2009, Macedonian daily Dnevnik reported that the governments in Athens and New York did not expect substantial progress in the new talks.

Last year's failure to achieve a compromise was compounded by Greek ire at Skopje attempting to introduce additional issues into the matter, such as Skopje's claims regarding a Macedonian minority in Greece. Towards the end of the year, Skopje said that it was taking Athens to the international court in The Hague after Greece blocked Macedonia's Nato membership aspirations at the military alliance's 2008 Bucharest summit.

On January 12, Greek daily Kathimerini reported that European Union officials had criticised a decision by Macedonian prime minister Nikola to name the country's main national highway after the ancient Greek warrior Alexander the Great. The EU officials said that the move would offend Greece.

"It will provoke the same problems as the renaming of Skopje's airport," said Dutch MEP Erik Meijer, of the decision to give the name Alexander the Macedon to the section of pan-European Corridor 10 connecting Serbia in the north to Greece in the south.

A day earlier, the International Crisis Group (ICG) released a report saying that Macedonia should accept the compromise name proposed by Nimetz in 2008 and that Greece should back down on its veto of Macedonian Nato membership.

"The main Nato-EU strategy for stabilising Macedonia and the region via enlargement was derailed in 2008," the ICG report said.

In its account of the ICG report, Macedonian agency Makfax quoted the ICG as saying that Greece should accept the "Macedonian" identity and language of its northern neighbour bearing in mind that this does not imply exclusivity and does not challenge the application of the same adjective to the inhabitants of the Greek province of Macedonia.

Skopje and Athens should undertake to examine the common history of the region in order to reach a basic understanding and avoid references in the educational curricula that offend the national sensibilities of either country, the report said.