Word Sad news:Kiro Gligorov, the First Democratically Elected president of Macedonia died

Kiro Gligorov, the First Democratically Elected president of Macedonia died

source:http://www.allcurrentaffairs.tk/2012/01/kiro-gligorov-first-democratically.html

Kiro Gligorov, the first democratically elected president of Macedonia died in Skopje on 1 January 2012. He had led his nation through a bloodless secession from the former Yugoslavia.

Gligorov had became president of Macedonia in January 1991 when it was still a Yugoslav republic. He led his countrymen through a referendum in which they voted for independence, and the territory of 2.1 million people became the only republic to secede from Yugoslavia without a war. Gligorov served two consecutive presidential terms, leading the nation from January 1991 to November 1999.

Kiro Gligorov

Born in the central Macedonian town of Stip on 3 May 1917, Gligorov graduated from law school in Belgrade. He was working as a lawyer for a private bank in Skopje when World War II broke out. He joined the partisan movement fighting against the Nazi occupation from its early days.

He joined the partisan movement fighting against the Nazi occupation and was one of the organizers of the Anti-Fascist Assembly for the People's Liberation of Macedonia, or ASNOM in 1945. The organization worked to establish Macedonia's identity and territory within the Yugoslav federation and is considered the cornerstone of the Macedonian state.

In the years that followed the end of the second world war, the republic's Communist leaders sent Gligorov to Belgrade to represent Macedonia. The move was considered to be an attempt —to distance Gligorov from Skopje because of his ideas about the Macedonian national cause.

Gligorov worked in several positions in the Yugoslav capital and became known as one of the proponents of economic reforms in the 1960s.

In the late 1980s, then-Yugoslav Prime Minister Ante Markovic invited him to join his economic reform team during a brief period of economic prosperity before nationalism began to pull the federation apart.

Gligorov returned to Skopje and in January 1991 became the first democratically elected president of Macedonia, which was a Yugoslav republic at the time. parts of the federation began to break away from the federation in a series of wars. Macedonia eventually seceded after a referendum, and Gligorov maintained his position at the helm of the newly created country.

Gligorov also faced domestic unrest, with the country's large ethnic Albanian minority pressing for greater cultural and political autonomy.

The demands eventually led to armed conflict in early 2001. The two sides eventually signed a peace accord under which minorities were guaranteed greater rights, and NATO peacekeepers were sent to the country.

Dispute with Greece

The early days his presidency were overshadowed by a bitter dispute with Greece over the newly independent nation's name , the dispute that continues till date. Greece objected to the use of the name Macedonia, as it implied territorial ambitions on its own northern province of the same name. It also objected to a symbol on the new country's flag and articles of the Macedonian Constitution that Greece believed suggested territorial claims.

Greece had also imposed a crippling 19-month embargo on its northern neighbor. In 1995, the Macedonian government signed an accord with Greece agreeing to remove the symbol from its flag and revising some articles of the Constitution. In official bodies such as the United Nations, the country is known as the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia.