Democratic Union for Integration

Chanting slogans against the heads of Macedonia's ruling parties, several thousand ethnic Albanians rallied on Friday in Skopje at a protest organized by Albanian associations and small political parties.

A high-ranking official from Macedonia's junior ruling party, the Democratic Union for Integration, DUI, told BIRN that international pressure played no role in its switch from its initial decision to leave the country's interim government to its announcement that it would only replace its existing ministers with new ones.

Macedonia's junior ruling party, the Democratic Union for Integration, DUI, has abruptly withdrawn support for changes to the criminal code that would give defendants much more time to prepare before charges are raised against them.

Macedonia's junior ruling party, the Democratic Union for Integration, DUI, says the main ethnic Macedonian parties should stop arguing and prevaricating and erect long-promised monuments to Albanian figures as part of the government-funded Skopje 2014 revamp.

A group of protesters on Thursday occupied a location in the Skopje municipality of Butel, where a metal 55 meter-tall cross was to be installed.

The protesters were led by officials of the largest ethnic Albanian party in Macedonia, the Democratic Union for Integration (DUI).

Macedonia's main ruling VMRO DPMNE party and its junior partner, the Democratic Union for Integration, DUI, on Tuesday submitted a draft law that aims to outlaw the publication and re-publication of the content of the opposition's controversial wiretaps.

Afrim, 22, works in one of the many stores in Skopje's old bazaar and does not seem that interested in politics at first glance. "Don't ask me, I'm not into that," he says.

But after a short conversation on music and girls, he opens up on recent political events - and how they impact on his life.

In a sign of growing disarray in the Democratic Union for Integration, DUI, two leading figures, the MP and head of the party's general assembly, Zuluf Adili, and Gzim Ostreni, a former DUI secretary general, said they will form a new party called Unity.

Ostreni was one-time head of the general staff of the ethnic Albanian insurgents during the armed conflict of 2001.

Senior Macedonian politicians have dismissed new court testimony that alleges they took huge bribes in relation to Deutsche Telecom.

The junior party in the ruling coalition, the Democratic Union for Integration, will not formally discuss two deadly incidents which saw two of its members killed.