Albanian party

BELGRADE - Kastriot Imeri, son of the activist of the opposition Albanian party "Democratic League of Kosovo" Hakim Imeri, who was killed in 1999, addressed a letter to the Special Court hoping that the circumstances of the death of his father will be clarified.

Ali Ahmeti, leader of Macedonia's main ethnic Albanian party, the Democratic Union for Integration, DUI, on Wednesday said the DUI will start negotiations with VMRO DPMNE since it had received a mandate to form the next government.

VMRO-DPMNE leader Nikola Gruevski has been given a mandate to form the next government of Macedonia, state-run MIA news agency reports.

Gruevski's conservative party, leading a coalition in the snap parliamentary election in December, got the biggest number of votes, but won the poll only by a small margin.

The junior ruling party in the last government, the Democratic Union for Integration, DUI, which won 10 of the 120 seats in parliament in the December 11 polls, has said it will wait for the final official election results before inviting all the main ethnic Albanian parties to discuss a common platform.

Nearly complete results in Macedonia's early general elections show the country's conservative coalition in a slim victory over its Social Democratic rivals, but with neither party winning enough parliamentary seats to form a government. Both sides have claimed victory.

VMRO-DPMNE party, which has dominated Macedonian politics since 2006, has a 1.24% lead on socialist rival SDSM in Sunday's election, official results show.

With nearly all the vote counted, the party of former Prime Minister Nikola Gruevski has got 37.98% of the vote.

Support for SDSM of Zoran Zaev is at 36.74%, according to the Central Election Commission (DIK)'s website.

Former Prime Minister Nikola Gruevski's VMRO-DPMNE party has having a 4-5 percent lead on social democrat SDSM of Zoran Zaev, first poll data shows.

The conservative party, which has been at the helm of Macedonia for ten years. has got 41.35%, with nearly a third of the vote counted.

Macedonia's Constitutional Court could potentially put the December 11 general election date on hold if it upholds a motion submitted on Tuesday by a small ethnic Albanian party.

The Uniteti party, which has no seats in parliaiment, says the larger number of registered voters in one of the six electoral districts renders the election unfair and thus illegal.

Ethnic Albanian opposition parties in Macedonia are organizing a protest march on May 9 in the northern town of Kumanovo, to mark the first anniversary of the bloody events there that led to the death of 14 citizens and eight policemen.

A spokesperson for Macedonia's main ethnic Albanian party, the DUI, - junior party in government - the said that unless all four main political parties participate in the June elections, the credibility of the vote will be questionable and it will not help solve Macedonia's deep political crisis.