Macedonia PM forms coalition with Albanian party

SKOPJE (Reuters) – Macedonian Prime Minister Nikola Gruevski has agreed with the main ethnic Albanian party to form a coalition government to aim at getting its NATO and European Union bids back on track, his party said on Saturday.

Gruevski’s conservatives have 63 seats in the 120-seat parliament but sought a partner from the Albanian minority.

Their choice, the Democratic Union of Integration, was born out of a 2001 Albanian insurgency for greater rights.

The government’s main priority will be to revive Skopje’s bid for membership of NATO and to secure a date for accession talks with the EU. Both processes are now blocked by Greece due to an 18-year dispute over Macedonia’s name.