Last-Ditch Effort to Save Macedonia Crisis Deal

As the informal Monday deadline for a deal on several key urgent reform priorities expired, the EU delegation to Macedonia said that it was still trying to bring the two sides closer to an agreement to end the political crisis that has gripped the country.

"We cannot say yet that the deal is dead," a source from the EU delegation to Macedonia told BIRN under condition of anonymity.

But the source stressed that action was needed now to save the deal.

"We must point out that the situation is urgent and that country's leaders need to find immediate solutions in order to preserve the country's European perspective," the source said.

The source also said that EU mediators are currently meeting the country's warring political parties in order to iron out differences about two key points - the appointment of opposition figures as government ministers and the completion of the Special Prosecutor's team to investigate the mass surveillance allegations that sparked the political crisis.

Last week, EU mediator Peter Vanhoutte told media that the EU-brokered crisis deal would be dead - and Macedonia may find itself as isolated as Belarus - if leaders fail to agree on the key reforms by the weekend.

This came after the parties missed the October 20 deadline for the appointment of opposition ministers to Nikola Gruevski's government.

The parties previously missed the deadline for a package of urgent electoral reforms to ensure free and fair early elections in April and failed to enable the Special Prosecutor to start probing the illegal surveillance cases.

On Friday at midnight, Gruevski and the opposition Social Democrats, SDSM leader, Zoran Zaev, again failed to strike a deal.

The opposition over the...