Fresh Macedonia Crisis Talks End in Logjam

In a short press statement issued after the meeting, Macedonia's four main party leaders said only that they had met to discuss details about the government that will prepare snap elections.

The deal was agreed on June 2 with the mediation of the EU Enlargement Commissioner, Johannes Hahn.

"In this context, the leaders agreed to meet again in the coming days" the statement reads.

Prime Minister Nikola Gruevski used the talks to present his own vision of an exit from the crisis through an action plan that would implement systemic reforms in the rule of law, listed as part of a recent EU list of urgently needed reforms.

The opposition Social Democrats, led by Zoran Zaev, say Gruevski must step down before the snap polls are organized by April next year.

Monday's meeting was preceded by a day that the EU and American ambassadors to Macedonia, Aivo Orav and Jess Baily, spent trying to coordinate and bring the warring leaders closer to a solution.

Also present at the talks were Ali Ahmeti, head of the junior ruling party, the Democratic Union for Integration, and Menduh Thaci, head of the opposition Democratic Party of Albanians.

The crisis in Macedonia centres on claims of mass illegal surveillance. The opposition accuses Gruevski of masterminding the surveillance of over 20,000 people and is 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...