Alliance for Albanians

Zoran Zaev revealed the composition of his cabinet late Sunday, which parliament is expected to approved this week. Speaker of Parliament Talat Xhaferi has set the date for the session to start on Tuesday.

The key posts are to be shared between Zaev's Social Democratic Party, SDSM, and Macedonia's main ethnic Albanian party, the Democratic Union for Integration, DUI.

Starting from Tuesday, the Social Democratic leader Zoran Zaev is holding a series of meetings with his coalition partners from the three main ethnic Albanian parties to align their stances on the future ministers in his cabinet.

On Monday, Zaev confirmed he was ready to start final talks about the ministers and sounded optimistic about the outcome.

After a meeting on Wednesday night, the Democratic Union for Integration, DUI, confirmed that one key obstacle to backing a new opposition Social Democrat-led government - a new law extending the use of the Albanian language - had been removed.

The ethnic Albanian parties involved in organizing a planned roundtable of Albanian leaders, which is designed to oversee fulfillment of the objectives of the parties' joint declaration, have traded blamed over its failure to take shape.

Amid the ongoing delay in forming a new government after the December 11 elections, an opinion poll published on Monday suggested that if the polls were repeated, the ruling VMRO DPMNE party and its bitter rival, the opposition Social Democrats, SDSM, would win almost equal support, as they did two months ago.

Despite the victory of the opposition Social Democrats, SDSM, in the election re-run on Sunday in the village of Tearce in Macedonia, the number of seats that each bloc won in the December 11 elections remains the same. The ruling VMRO DPMNE party won 51 and the SDSM 49 in the 120-seat parliament.

The opposition won 245 votes in Tearce and the ruling party won just 150.

Political observers suggest that after the Sunday's polls almost ended in a dead heat, a renewal of the past government coalition between the main ruling VMRO DPMNE and its junior ethnic Albanian partner, the Democratic Union for Integration, DUI - although technically possible - is very unlikely.