EU, US Broker New Crisis Talks in Macedonia

Macedonian leaders meet in Skopje on Tuesday for talks on the country's crisis facilitated by the US ambassador, Jess Baily, and the EU ambassador, Aivo Orav.

The talks gathered Prime Minister Nikola Gruevski, opposition Social Democrat leader Zoran Zaev, the head of the junior ruling party, Ali Ahmeti, of the Democratic Union for Integration, and Menduh Thaci, of the opposition Democratic Party of Albanians, DPA.

The hope is that negotiations may help resolve the crisis caused by opposition claims that Gruevski ordered the surveillance of over 20,000 people.

The claim is based on tapes of official conversations that the opposition has been releasing in installments since February.

Gruevski says the tapes were "created" by unnamed foreign intelligence services and given to the opposition to destabilise the country.

The Prime Minister has ignored opposition calls for him to resign, but says he is open to talks on other issues such as reforms in key sectors including electoral rules, the judiciary and the media.

The tapes appear to reveal the government's direct involvement in election fraud, abuse of the justice system and media and even suggest it covered up the murder of a young man by a police officer.

The meeting comes after ten hours of EU-mediated talks in Strasbourg between Gruevski and Zaev ended last week without a breakthrough.

The Strasbourg meeting was mediated by three MEPs and joined by the EU's Enlargement Commissioner, Johannes Hahn.

The two sides failed to engage over concrete proposals but did determine a time frame for future talks and agreed on the need to establish guarantees that any deals that resulted would be respected by all parties.

The Macedonian media have...