Clear Winner In Macedonia Vote, Guns Still In Play

Once the re-vote is done and the results certified, Gruevski will seek a coalition partner to bolster his majority in the 120-seat assembly.

Macedonian Prime Minister Nikola Gruevski scored an overwhelming election victory on Sunday but the violence that marred the poll may perpetuate divisions and delay the country's progress towards European Union membership.

Gruevski's conservative VMRO-DPMNE party will have the healthiest majority in parliament in more than a decade, riding a wave of nationalist anger over Greece blocking Macedonia's NATO membership invitation in April.

The victory vindicated Gruevski's controversial decision to call a snap election, gambling that the snub would strengthen his hand and pay off with a stronger four-year mandate.

But with one man dead and nine others wounded, some observers blamed Gruevski for ignoring the risk of violence among the 25-percent Albanian minority, divided between two hostile parties both with links to armed groups.

"We can expect a very bad report card," said analyst Dane Taleski. "We won't be getting a date for (EU) accession talks this year."

The head of the opposition Social-Democratic Union, Radmila Sekerinska, said Macedonia had paid "too high a price".

Though confined to Albanian areas, the violence could perpetuate a Western impression that, seven years after Macedonia was pulled back from the brink of all-out ethnic war, the Kalashnikov is still a part of the political process.

"Our fatherland said goodbye to good reason and to its EU and NATO ambitions," influential daily Dnevnik said in an editorial.

Krisztina Nagy, spokeswoman for EU Enlargement Commissioner Olli Rehn said Brussels would wait for the monitors' full report, but had made clear previously that free and fair elections were "an essential element" for EU progress.

In 2001, the West used the lure of NATO and the EU to get Albanian guerrillas to disarm and join politics.

It is still alert to unrest in the Balkans so soon after the February secession of Kosovo Albanians from Serbia, the latest jolt in a region torn apart by the Yugoslav wars of the 1990s.

VIOLENCE, TERROR

In an ominous echo of the 2001 rebellion, police rushed to bullet-scarred Aracinovo after monitors reported the arrival of men with machine guns. One man was killed and two injured in a shootout that the police and DUI officials blamed on each other.

Besides the gunfire, which halted voting in the town, ballot boxes went missing in several areas and two election officials were briefly held by gunmen, then rescued by police.

Among a dozen men arrested later was a notorious veteran of the "Albanian National Army" of 2001, who has links to the DPA.

Macedonia's Albanian community is split over who gets to share power. The Democratic Union for Integration (DUI) blamed the rival Democratic Party of Albanians (DPA) -- Gruevski's partners in the outgoing coalition -- of colluding with the police in "provocations, violence and psychological terror".

They have been on bad terms since 2006, when the DUI, the most popular Albanian party, was left out of the government.

Gruevski has promised a re-run of the vote in troubled areas. A source in Macedonia's election commission said the number of votes affected was around 40,000 out of an estimated total 250,000 ethnic Albanian ballots.

"It's not much, but it could make a difference, one or two deputies more," the source said.

Once the re-vote is done and the results certified, Gruevski will seek a coalition partner to bolster his majority in the 120-seat assembly.

He has said he favours allying with the DPA, a move likely to further alienate the many Albanians who voted for the DUI.

"Despite the violence and ballot-stuffing, we still have more deputies than DPA," said senior DUI official Xhevat Ademi. "It won't be the first time they convert defeat into victory."