Mersel Biljali

Former MP Mersel Biljali, a law and political science professor, said that despite delays in implementing the peace deal over the years, it has helped the country to ease ethnic tensions and avoid greater bloodshed.

"It sobered us, directed us towards living with one another, building a joint future together, understanding each other a bit better, and building trust," Biljali said.

Despite their common goal of toppling the long-standing Prime Minister, Nikola Gruevski, opposition parties from the ethnic Macedonian and Albanian blocs appear unlikely to form a joint front in the coming general election, political observers say.

Macedonia's main ruling VMRO DPMNE party and its junior partner, the Democratic Union for Integration, DUI, on Tuesday submitted a draft law that aims to outlaw the publication and re-publication of the content of the opposition's controversial wiretaps.

Macedonia's opposition said it had audio tapes revealing a minister's sex life, but did not wish to publish them in order to play fair.

The Social Democrats' vice president Radmila Shekerinska said her party has obtained many details about the private life of a minister and other ruling party officials, contained in the tapes it has collected on illegal surveillance.