The Macedonian Foreign Minister promised support for an Irish bid for a seat on the UN Security Council when he met the Minister of Foreign Affairs at the end of Mr Andrews's visit to the Balkans yesterday.
Mr Andrews also met the country's president, prime minister and speaker of the assembly. Although the meetings were planned as courtesy calls, they went on longer than expected. They pressed the case that Macedonia desperately needed help from the EU. Mr Andrews was visiting Macedonia to strengthen bilateral relations between the two countries. He agreed to take a letter from the minister, Mr Aleksander Dimitrov, seeking support to a meeting of the EU Council of Ministers on Monday, and to press for an urgent stability pact for the region.
The Stability Pact for South-Eastern Europe, drawn up after the Kosovo crisis, has been agreed in principle but not put into practice.
Skopje is only a two-hour drive from Pristina but it is a world apart. In contrast with the battered buildings and uncollected rubbish of Pristina, Skopje is a city of wide, clean streets and modern, well-kept buildings.
Despite sharing the 40 per cent unemployment rate which characterises the region, people bustle along the streets with a sense of purpose. Shops are well-stocked and those who work in them are courteous.
Yet they are clinging to this apparent normality with their fingernails. The tiny, landlocked republic of Macedonia was the poorest state in the former Yugoslavia and negotiated its independence from Belgrade peacefully. However, independence brought the loss of Yugoslav markets and a dispute about its use of the name Macedonia cost it trade with Greece.
All this was before the Kosovo crisis, which brought 350,000 refugees into this country of two million, placing an intolerable strain on already depleted resources. Macedonians responded generously, even though they feared the impact of the refugees on the delicate balance between Albanians - they make up a quarter of the population - and Macedonians in their state.
They received the congratulations of the international community and promises of aid in the form of the stability pact. So far this has not materialised and the country is struggling to survive with very little foreign trade and no foreign investment.