http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/macedonia/2055536/Macedonia -prepares-for-decisive-election.html
Macedonia prepares for decisive election By Harry de Quetteville Last Updated: 1:49AM BST 31/05/2008 Macedonia votes on Sunday in a bitterly contested election that offers the Balkan republic the chance to break from a cycle of violence and put itself forward for European Union and Nato membership. AP Electoral posters of Radmila Sekerinska, left, leader of the opposition Social Democrats and Nikola Gruevski, right, Prime Minister and ruling VMRO DPMNE leader, are seen on a street in Macedonia's capital Skopje The tiny republic, which split from Yugoslavia peacefully in 1991, only narrowly avoided civil war a decade later and sees EU membership as a vital step to economic and military security. But an election campaign that has been violent even by Balkan standards, including assassination attempts, could jeopardise Macedonia's plans to secure stability and risks a fresh round of confrontations between the country's ethnic Albanians and Macedonians. A long row with its neighbour Greece over the use of the name Macedonia prevented it from joining Nato at a summit in Romania in April. The dispute was described by an American official as "the world's stupidest major issue". Macedonia's government then called snap elections. Nikola Gruevski, 37, the Western-educated prime minister, hopes that his moderate Right-wing bloc will win an absolute majority tomorrow in the country's 120-seat parliament. He is up against Nikola Gruevski, the leader of the conservative VMRO-DPMNE party, Radmila Sekerinska, leader of the Social Democratic Union, Ali Ahmeti, the Democratic Union for Integration leader, and Menduh Thaci, leader of the Democratic Party of Albanians. Albanians make up a quarter of Macedonia's population of two million and gained a raft of minority rights in 2001 that just prevented the country slipping into war. But the campaign has been marred by violence, including an apparent attempt to assassinate Mr Ahmeti. "The common desire to join Nato was one key thread holding both ethnic groups together," said William Montgomery, a former US envoy in the Balkans. He blamed Greece for driving "one more wedge between these groups, as well as raising nationalist tensions in a country – and region – which absolutely needs exactly the opposite if it is ever going to stabilise". Athens has refused to back down on the issue of the name Macedonia, which also identifies a northern Greek region. The kingdom of Ancient Macedonia, once led by Alexander the Great, now falls largely within the borders of Greece and the republic of Macedonia. Greece fears that its northern neighbour, which it refers to as the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, could make some cross-border territorial claim to the lands of that ancient kingdom. "The name Republic of Macedonia is not a phantom fear for us Greeks. "It is linked with the deliberate plan to take over a part of Greek territory that has had a Greek identity for more than three millennia," said Dora Bakoyannis, the Greek foreign minister, earlier this year. A host of compromise options, including "Upper" and "Northern" Macedonia, have so far failed to produce an agreement. Both nations jealously claim the legacy of Alexander the Great. Ancient Macedonia's capital, Pella, lies well within Greek borders, near its northern port of Thessaloniki. "Alexander was Greek. Everything here was Greek," said a guide at Pella, gesturing at the columns and mosaics that have been excavated from the ancient site. "All the inscriptions are in Greek. Skopje doesn't have any of that. We want good relations with them but they want to take our name."
