VMRO DPMNE party

Gruevski said he would submit his resignation to the speaker of parliament on Friday morning. The resignation would come into force on 100 days before the elections.

The three MEPs - Ivo Vajgl, Eduard Kukan and Richard Howitt - are to arrive on Monday and have separate meetings with representatives of the four main political parties in Macedonia, aimed at ensuring that the crisis deal struck last summer is properly implemented.

A ruling VMRO DPMNE party official told BIRN on Monday that the party is still undecided between several candidates to take up the prime ministerial post after its leader and incumbent premier Gruevski resigns by January 15, as previously agreed.

The three officials, who are among those most implicated in the mass wiretapping that was revealed in February by the opposition, were proposed as the first witnesses to give evidence by MPs on the commission from Gruevski's ruling VMRO DPMNE party.

The negotiating team from the ruling VMRO DPMNE party of embattled Prime Minister Nikola Gruevski left the EU-sponsored talks on Tuesday after the opposition Social Democrats' leader Zoran Zaev described most of the mainstream media as his enemies.

Macedonia's opposition Social Democrats, SDSM, have demanded an emergency parliamentary session on the subject of air pollution, calling also for the resignation of the Mayor of Skopje, Koce Trajanovski.

A deadline for the Macedonian government and the opposition parties to iron out their differences on a package of media reforms expires on Friday.

The new party called Levica, formed by activists from the leftist social justice movements Lenka and Solidarnost, said on Monday that its main goal will be toppling embattled Prime Minister Nikola Gruevski and his ruling VMRO DPMNE party, which has been in power since 2006.

After several breached deadlines, Macedonia's warring parties on Friday reached an agreement on the appointment of several interim ministers and deputies from the ranks of the opposition.

The appointments were envisaged in the EU-brokered crisis agreement reached this summer that foresees several reforms being undertaken before early elections in April.

Commissioner Hahn told the media in Macedonia that despite the "bad day" of talks between government and opposition parties, he remained optimistic that a deal on the appointment of new ministers would be done.

Talks between the government of Prime Minister Nikola Gruevski and the opposition were set to resume Tuesday.