Jim Kolbe: “Clearly, it has been United States policy to recognize this nation as the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, and I…”

“Clearly, it has been United States policy to recognize this nation as the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, and I know that our State Department did not intend to change this policy through this article 98 agreement, which was intended to deal with another set of issues regarding the protection of American service personnel overseas, an issue which is important to many of us in this body. Clearly, this issue of the nation's name is an issue of contention in that the northern region of Greece also goes by Macedonia. I can tell the gentleman that we will raise this issue with the Department of State, and we will see if our colleagues in the Senate would agree to a restatement of current policy in the Statement of Managers that accompanies the fiscal year 2004 conference agreement.”