23 07 2007 Skopje_ Macedonia’s parliament held an urgent meeting on Monday aimed at setting out priorities in the field of reforms needed to speed up Macedonia's integration into the European Union and NATO.
During his address, the right-of-centre Prime Minister, Nikola Gruevski, singled out the implementation of the 2001 Ohrid Framework Agreement, fiscal decentralization, police and defence reform and judicial reform as priorities.
Gruevski also tried to clarify the terms of a controversial agreement reached with the main Albanian opposition party, the Democratic Union for Integration, DUI, which resulted in the DUI calling off its parliamentary boycott in May.
“There are three things that we have agreed to and there are three things that we did not agreed to,” Gruevski told the legislators, denying opposition accusations of a conspiracy between his VMRO-DPMNE party and the DUI.
Gruevski said the parties had reached neither a written nor a secret agreement on the nationwide use of Macedonian and Albanian as two official languages. Nor had he agreed to a draft-law on granting pensions to former ethnic Albanian guerrilla fighters.
Gruevski also denied reaching a deal with the DUI on the formation of a government through a dual majority vote. “We only agreed that these three issues will be subject to debate in the parliament”, Gruevski said.
On the other hand, the DUI leader, Ali Ahmeti who addressed parliament shortly afterwards, claimed he had obtained a written agreement on all three issues and asked for restraint on the part of the Prime Minister in this matter. “Let’s not comment prematurely. The [parliamentary] commissions should first discuss these issues”, Ahmeti urged.
The session comes after judicial reforms stalled in April, and after high European and NATO officials have started mentioning the implementation of the agreement between VMRO-DPMNE and DUI as a condition for Macedonia’s further integration. (Birn)
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