Macedonia Opposition Steps Up Snap Poll Calls

Gordan Georgiev, vice-president of the biggest opposition party in Macedonia, said the Social Democrats would file a no-confidence vote in parliament as soon as the NATO summit in Lisbon, set for November 20, had finished.

The summit is likely to mark another setback for Macedonia, which has long been seeking to join the North Atlantic alliance only to find its application blocked by neighbouring Greece, which objects to Macedonia's name.

In June, the Social Democrats said they wanted a snap general election but would wait for the NATO summit to end so as not to jeopardize the country’s chances of becoming a member.

Amid growing certainty that this will not happen at the summit, as the dispute with Greece remains unresolved, Georgiev said his party would also step up public pressure for early elections by staging protests.

The Social Democrats accuse the ruling centre-right VMRO DPMNE party under Nikola Gruevski of making insufficient effort to solve the dispute with Greece, thus damaging the prospects of economic development and of progress towards EU membership.

The Social Democrats say they are not put off by the fact that they and their coalition partners hold only 30 of the 120 seats in parliament, while the ruling centre-right bloc has roughly double that number.

"We will put before all parliamentary parties the dilemma of whether they want to stay comfortable in their seats or offer fresh perspectives to the people," Georgiev said.

NATO officials admit there is little hope of Macedonia gtting a green ight in Bucharest, following the Greek veto at the 2008 summit in Bucharest.

"The decision of the Bucharest summit still stands and... accession negotiations with Skopje can [only] start... once a mutually acceptable solution to the name issue has been found," NATO chief Andreas Fogh Rasmussen said on Monday.

"To my knowledge, we have not reached a conclusion on the name issue so in that respect I wouldn’t expect a new development in few days before the summit," Rasmussen added.