Controversy
The Serbian angle deems the term controversial, referring to parts of a neighboring country's territory as "western outlands" can imply territorial claims, as in the example of Germany regarding Alsace in France.
For this reason, the term has not been used by Belgrade in contacts with Sofia since 1948. It was mentioned once, in the 1948 Bled Agreement by Josip Broz Tito and Georgi Dimitrov. This was in the period of Joseph Stalin's push for a Communist super-state in the Balkans, the Balkan Federative Republic, which was to include Yugoslavia, Albania and Bulgaria. The BFR idea was abandoned with the Informbiro Resolution of 1948, when the split between Tito and Stalin occurred. Despite not being used internationally (until the 1990s when it was revived), it is very widely used in internal social and political communication in Bulgaria.
Read more about this topic: Western Outlands
Famous quotes containing the word controversy:
“Ours was a highly activist administration, with a lot of controversy involved ... but I’m not sure that it would be inconsistent with my own political nature to do it differently if I had it to do all over again.”
—Jimmy Carter (James Earl Carter, Jr.)
“And therefore, as when there is a controversy in an account, the parties must by their own accord, set up for right Reason, the Reason of some Arbitrator, or Judge, to whose sentence, they will both stand, or their controversy must either come to blows, or be undecided, for want of a right Reason constituted by Nature; so is it also in all debates of what kind soever.”
—Thomas Hobbes (1579–1688)