Greece said a giant statue of Alexander the Great unveiled by Macedonia was a “provocation” that complicated efforts to solve a name row that has blocked Skopje’s EU and Nato entry bids.

“The statues placed by the government in Skopje are a provocation,” new Greek Foreign Minister Stavros Lambrinidis told Parliament.

“They burden the talks and cultivate irredentism, the greatest threat for the Balkans,” he said, adding that Athens had informed European officials on the issue.

Several hundred people gathered to watch cranes put in place the 13-metre statue of the fourth-century warrior-king sitting astride his horse on a 10-metre pedestal in the centre of the capital.

Skopje authorities officially call the statue a Warrior On a Horse in a bid to prevent Greek objections, but his face resembles numerous depictions of the ancient warrior-king of Macedon.

Athens, which also claims the ancient king whose empire spread from the southern Balkans to the Himalaya, sees the statue, as well as the former Yugoslav republic’s name, as a direct affront “with the aim of stirring up nationalism and conflict”.

Skopje officially became a candidate for EU membership in 2005, but Athens has blocked its accession to the 27-nation bloc and Nato arguing that the name Macedonia implies a claim on the northern Greek region of the same name.

But Macedonian officials say that a name change could lead to a denial of the country’s language and national identity.

Almost two decades of UN-led negotiations over the name dispute have been fruitless.

Macedonia decided to finance the statue in 2007, the year after it changed the name of Skopje airport to Alexander the Great in a move that also riled Greece.

Born in Pella, in modern-day Greece, Alexander conquered the Persian empire and much of the world known to ancient Greeks before dying in Babylon in 323 BC at the age of 32.