(Prime-minister Gruevski of Macedonia, left, appears relaxed during a short break between two rounds of meeting today in The Hague. He was so kind that he interrupted his conversation and gave me a statement for the Macedonian program of Deutsche Welle, the German state radio. Unfortunately, the recording got somehow deleted from the iPod. All in all - Gruevski said he was very satisfied with the talks. Guli, a trusted friend, called in her warm, sincere, cheerful voice full of kindness to ask me how I was. Then she asked how were all the members of the family, their health, travels, business lives, that sort of thing. Though her very good manners allow her to enlighten one's days with this sort of pleasant surprises, this time I kind of felt there was more to the call. After reciprocating I decided to ask her what was the big news. She is far to clever to fall in such a trap and after some quarter of an hour chatting she slid in a remark that I after some 15-16 years of great friendship I have appeared in her dream and that she sort of let me conclude, made her pick up a phone and call. Now, Gulli is a very, but very modern and superbly educated young woman who dropped a successful business to dedicate herself to teaching German in some sort of a Montessori establishment. We chatted some more and I invited her and her mother for lunch two weekends from now and promised to cook myself as a special honor and then (this I figured much latter, being the GWB-IQ) she added that in the dream I offered her fish or cooked fish or carried fish. The message was that in her dream I appeared with a fish. When we hung up making sure that we shall arrange the families to be soon having a great weekend-lunch on our southern balcony my wife asked why did she call and I told her about her dream. -Fish in a dream is loss,- said my wife without lifting her eyes from her chick-lit book.- She thought you have endured either painful personal damage or loss or both -I did, I have lost the voice recording of the statement, remember? -A statement by a prime-minister of Macedonia for German state radio is not not big loss, dummy. Fish in a dream is big loss. -You are nuts. If you know how hard I worked for this 5-minute statement, if you know what sort of vulgar fight I had with his chief-of-staff to get it, if you know the tension, the sweat the promises I gave to Nada (she is the boss of the Macedonian program of Deutsche Welle) then you would not speak as you do. -I know. You better learn to handle recording with your stupid iPod or I'll smash it, because when I've seen your face after realizing the statement was not there - you looked like a zombie. You nearly had a stroke. My stomach turned upside down. Then she paused for a sec and picking words like cherries added: -But such an ominous a dream could hardly be compensated with this sort of a loss. It needs more. -Didn't I nearly lost my vision, remember the painful eye virus? -OK, let the bygones be bygones. Learn to handle the iPod. (I consulted the dream interpreter and it says something different about dreaming fish. Of course more interpretations ). If the voice recording of the Macedonian prime-minister's statement was badly needed for Deutsche Welle. It is absolutely irrelevant for this community. First of all, not very many of you are really interested about Macedonia, the Balkans, the destiny of the Scheweningen detainees. the enlargement of the EU and that sort of thing. But, the messages from the exchanges Nikola Gruevski had with the top figures of the North Atlantic Treaty Alliance, the European Parliament, the EU Commission, the officials of the UN International Tribunal for Former Yugoslavia and eventually with the acting prime-minister of the Kingdom of the Netherlands are something different. Once you think a bit over them they indicate a whole different range of global values. The other, second significance of the context of the visit by this very amiable, relaxed, visibly self-confident and modestly self-satisfied young technocrat from Macedonia, is that a simple commissioner of the EU implies a change of the constitution of a sovereign, recognized European candidat-member country as a "cultural" requirement for full membership. That comes from the mouth of somebody whop represents a formal political, monetary, economic, customs, military and nearly territorial Union which exists and performs without a Constitution in sight! You may not be interested in the future of Kosovo nor about the ethnic squabbles between Macedonians and Albanians, but this visit makes it suddenly so very clear that such an attitude is absolutely marginal because there is somebody else who is more than interested about Kosovo and in that context about the Albanian attitudes in the region. His name is Vladimir Putin and he just declared that he will veto any arrangement regarding Kosovo which Russia will not find acceptable. In the meantime poor Oli Rehn uses Hollywood tango-dancing vocabulary to press Gruevski extend concessions to DUI former rebels, now dissatisfied opposition, who used Kosovo for their attacks on civilians in Macedonia. He, Rehn, did not give a lesson to DUI that they were in power for the past four years - now is time to be in the Parliament (not street) opposition but insisted that Gruevski dance tango. With this sort of messages - Gruevski returns to Skopje relaxed. He did everything right while the EU made a fool of itself.
It will be very cold in Riga by 29th of November during the summit of NATO and Russian gas will need to flow to warm the delegates out there. Thus, what kind of NATO secretary-general is Jap de Hoop Scheffer when he "hopes" and then is "actually sure" that there will be an encouraging statement for Macedonia in Riga. Fifth time in a row encouragement? Who needs that sort of an Alliance which depends on Poland to send 1,000 troops to Afghanistan? I mean, this is my third position, that everything requires a context to deliberate upon accordingly.

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