Experience has taught us that it is very difficult to communicate with people who have lived under, and have been trained by, the Communist mentality. Case in point: the misleading and well-camouflaged claims made by the honorable foreign minister of the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (FYROM), Antonio Milososki, to The Washington Times in the article "Name game blame" (Embassy Row, July 11) that his country will promote stronger trade relations with the United States, and, with its transition to an independent nation, should be designated Macedonia, not FYROM.

Mr. Milososki claimed that his country has "gone from a security consumer to a security provider," which is hardly accurate and honest. What the minister forgot to mention is the teachings in FYROM's schools and military academy that continue to poison the new generations with falsehoods, planting the seeds of hatred to come in the years ahead and in clear violation of the U.N.-brokered "Intermediate Agreement" signed by his country and Greece. FYROM today is more a picture of a terrorist training camp rather than a "security provider."

"Our name is the cornerstone of our identity," said Mr. Milososki. What he left out was when and how it received that name. Did the name belong to somebody else for millennia before Josip Broz, or "Tito," and Josef Stalin in 1944 re-baptized "Vardarska Banovina" into "Macedonia," usurping the name Macedonia from the northern province of Greece with the ultimate goal of annexing Macedonia away from Greece and gaining access to the Aegean?

Unfortunately for the minister, history recorded that President Truman provided the arms, and the Greeks provided the rivers of blood to stop Tito's and Stalin's plans, rescued the Macedonia province and the rest of Greece from the Communists' deadly embrace, and kept Greece and her Macedonia province on the western side of the Iron Curtain. What the province lost in battle then, it now expects to be given on a silver platter.

Mr. Milososki, your people once claimed that there were about 750,000 of them in the United States. The 2000 census revealed the truth as being not even 40,000. You now claim that 120 countries have recognized you by your self-declared identity. Would you kindly produce such a list for the public and identify exactly which countries have recognized you so officially by government-to-government official letter and which others are only by coerced bilateral agreements between companies in your country and other countries?

We hope you enjoyed your visit to the United States of America, Mr. Milososki. The truth can neither be killed nor ignored. The name "Macedonia" is an indisputable part of Greece's historic and cultural legacy, and the Hellenic world will never give up its ownership.

NINA GATZOULIS

Supreme President

Pan-Macedonian Association

Dover, NH