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by Maria Spiliopoulou
ATHENS, June 28 (Xinhua) — Greece’s Supreme Court prosecutor ordered a probe on Thursday after Foreign Minister Nikos Kotzias complained of having received more than 800 letters containing threats against his life and his family, Greek national news agency AMNA reported.
During an interview with local radio station 24/7 on Thursday, Kotzias said he had received multiple threats, but authorities had failed to take action and so he tracked down telephone numbers, addresses and names of people who had made the threatening phone calls himself.
He believed the threats were made over the Macedonia name deal that the Greek government reached with the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (FYROM) earlier this month.
Kotzias appeared confident that the June 17 Prespes agreement to change FYROM’s name to the Republic of North Macedonia will succeed in clearing the hurdles in the country’s path to European Union (EU) accession and eventually be ratified by Greece’s parliament.
According to the current timetable, a referendum on the name deal will take place in the neighboring country in the second half of September this year.
Changes to FYROM’s constitution will follow, after which the agreement will have to be ratified by the Greek parliament.
Athens and Skopje have been at odds since 1991 when FYROM declared its independence from then Yugoslavia, choosing the name Macedonia for its region, which is also the name of a northern Greek province.
Athens is worried that the use of the same name by the neighboring state could lead to territorial claims.
Following marathon UN-mediated negotiations, the two governments sealed a deal to put an end to the dispute, but the agreement has met strong protests on both sides.

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