Macedonia Opposition Bang Pans Against PM

A noisy protest that started on Wednesday afternoon in front of the Macedonian government house and ended near Prime Minister Nikola Gruevski's residence gathered thousands of protesters who banged cooking pots and lids, honked whistles and sirens - and made use of pretty much everything else that makes a noise.

"Come out Nicolae [alluding to the overthrown Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceau?escu] on your terrace, and take a look at your robbed, humiliated, destroyed Macedonian people," journalist and activist Petrit Saracini told the protest.

After many anti-government protests in the past few months, the aim of the rally was make make Gruevski realize that he has to go, said protesters gathered in the coalition of opposition parties and over 80 NGOs, called "Citizens for Macedonia".

A police cordon stopped protesters aa few hundred metres from Gruevski's residence. After a short time, they returned to government headquarters where they have set up a permanent protest camp since May 17.

Macedonia is in the throes of a deep political crisis that centres on claims of mass illegal surveillance.

The opposition Social Democrats led by Zoran Zaev accuse Gruevski of masterminding the surveillance of over 20,000 people and are demanding that he and his government resign.

Gruevski has insisted that compromising tapes of officials' conversations, which have been released in batches by the opposition since February, were "created" by unnamed foreign intelligence services and given to the opposition to destabilise the country.

The tapes point to election fraud, abuse of the justice system and media and suggest that the government covered up responsibility for the murder of a young man by a policeman.

The EU has...