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Macedonian Parliament Elects New Government

29 July 2011 04:26 (UTC +04:00)

Baku-APA. Macedonia’s parliament has approved a new coalition government, backing the coalition formed by Prime Minister Nikola Gruevski, APA reports quoting voanews.com website.

After a two-day debate, 70 members of the 123-seat parliament voted late Thursday for the coalition headed by Mr. Gruevski’s conservative VMRO-DPMNE party, with the ethnic Albanian DUI party as its junior partner.

The two parties won the most votes in early parliamentary elections last month.

Mr. Gruevski, who came to power in 2006, was re-elected for a third term.

He said his cabinet’s main priority would be to press ahead with reforms and restore economic growth in Macedonia. He said his government expects to increase economic growth to up to 7 percent per year by 2015.

The Prime Minister also said he will seek to speed up the nation’s integration with the European Union and NATO.

The opposition parties accused the government of offering the same promises since 2008 with little result.

Macedonia has been an EU candidate since 2005, but Greece has blocked its bid to open EU membership talks objecting to the former Yugoslav republic’s use of the name Macedonia, which is also the name of a Greek region. Athens says the use of the same name implies territorial ambitions towards Greece’s northern province.

The Macedonian government has vehemently denied the charge and has ruled out any change of its constitutional name of Macedonia.