President of Macedonia

Macedonians on Wednesday reacted to this by taking it to the streets.

Zaev has accepted to remove from the preamble of the Macedonian Constitution the sentence, "citizens living within the borders" - and replace it with mentioning "all ethnic communities."

Gjorge Ivanov sent this message to members of the Assembly in Skopje at the end of his one-hour speech on Friday.

He quoted the first president of Macedonia, Kiro Gligorov, "who said that the issue of name and identity is older than any constitution, any government, any party, and even the the state, and that no single person, nor any generation, has no right to trade with it."

Macedonian lawmakers approved a bill by which Albanian became the second official language in the country, Channel 5 announced. The vote was held today in the Macedonian Parliament. 64 MPs supported the bill.

FYROM (Macedonian) Assembly President Talat Xhaferi expects the opposition VMRO-DPMNE to withdraw more than 35,000 amendments that it submitted to the Bill on Language.

Earlier this month, Macedonian President Gjorge Ivanov refused to sign this bill, that would make Albanian the country's second official language, into law, and sent it back to parliament.

Earlier this month, Macedonian President Gjorge Ivanov refused to sign this bill, that would make Albanian the country's second official language, into law, and sent it back to parliament.

Xhaferi, who is from the DUI party representing ethnic Albanians, said Macedonia's coalition government was "determined to pass this law."

REUTERS

The US didn't resolve Macedonia's crisis, it made it much worse, and the fate of the Balkans is now in jeopardy because of the latest American-brokered "deal".

''Now everything is in the hands of the political forces in Macedonia.'' This was stated by the Prime Minister Boyko Borisov during an interview on TV+ and quoted by BGNES. The reason for his statement is the mandate which was given by the President of Macedonia Gjorge Ivanov to the leader of the Social Democratic Union Zoran Zaev to form a government.

Macedonia's Prime Minister-designate Zoran Zaev - who received a mandate to form a government on Wednesday - accused Serbian Prime Minister Aleksandar Vucic of running a hostile "campaign", when talking about an alleged "Macedonian scenario" that would then create instability in Serbia as well.

Macedonian President Gjorge Ivanov has given the mandate to form a government to the leader of the SDSM party Zoran Zaev.

In a brief address earlier in the day in the presidential residence, Ivanov and Zaev emphasized that all obstacles for giving the mandate to the leader of the parliamentary majority had been removed.

Russia's EU Ambassador Vladimir Chizhov says there is always an alternative to Euro-Atlantic integration when it comes to the Western Balkans.

Beta reported this citing an article published on the Brussels-based euractiv.com website.

According to the report, the diplomat "did not say concretely what Russia can offer to those states instead."