Skopje, 18 January 2022 (MIA) – We’re far from a situation in which we’ll say the work is done or even progressed in a positive direction. We need to be very careful and not rush, because it’s a matter of a very sensitive issue of the highest national and state interest. Broader social consensus is needed and careful consideration of every next step, North Macedonia’s President Stevo Pendarovski said in an interview with Television 24 on Tuesday’s visit by Bulgarian Prime Minister Kiril Petkov. According to him, Petkov’s visit on Tuesday, being his first visit to the country, was excellent, and Petkov’s meeting with opposition parties was to be welcomed. “The other side has imposed a set of issues that tread on our identity and we cannot allow that. That is why with any proposal coming from any side, even from the new government in Sofia, we need to measure thrice and cut once,” said Pendarovski. Petkov, Pendarovski said, is a nonstandard politician, with nonstandard vocabulary. “I think he’s a nontraditional politician, with a nonstandard vocabulary, who doesn’t use rhetoric recognizable from a past time. In a word or two, I would describe him as a technocrat and an optimist. As he was leaving my office I said to him I only knew one person in politics who was more optimistic than him – Zoran Zaev,” said Pendarovski.