Bujar Osmani

Macedonia's Special Prosecution, SJO, said on Wednesday that it is investigating Vice Prime Minister Bujar Osmani, along with 14 other people, over several suspicious public tenders in 2010 while he served as health minister in former premier Nikola Gruevski's cabinet.

Skopje needs to focus on the implementation of the name deal reached with Greece and on "urgent" reforms that will pave the way for the western Balkan country's accession to the European Union, the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia's (FYROM) deputy prime minister for European affairs said.

The conclusion of negotiations between Greece and the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia is being held up by disagreements over the "interpretation" of the legal documents and not over principle, according to senior ranking officials in Skopje.

UNMIK's Media Observer is reporting this on Friday, citing Pristina-based Albanian language newspaper Koha.

The conference is set to take place in Banja Luka, Bosnia-Herzegovina, the report continued - and Tirana and Skopje are boycotting it "because of exclusion of Kosovo from the event."

The main ruling party, the Social Democrats, SDSM and its ethnic Albanian junior ruling party, the Democratic Union for Integration, DUI, have confirmed that they are on the verge of making official their deal to support each other's candidates for the local elections on October 15.

Greece's foreign minister, Nikos Kotzias, is slated to pay a one-day visit to the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, the ministry said in an announcement on Wednesday.

The visit to the capital, Skopje, will take place on Thursday and will include talks on bilateral relations with Kotzias's counterpart, Nikola Dimitrov, which will be followed by joint statement to the press.

A spokesperson for the ethnic Albanian DUI party in Macedonia (FYROM) says Zoran Zaev's SDSM is ready to vote in favor of a genocide lawsuit against Serbia.

According to Bujar Osmani, the lawsuit would concern "genocide committed against Albanians between two wars."