Branko Crvenkovski, the Social Democratic prime minister of Macedonia , took a clear lead over his conservative rival in the first round of voting to find a successor for President Boris Trajkovksi, who was killed in a plane crash two months ago.

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Prime Minister Ljubco Georgievski again threatened to declare a formal state of war in Macedonia after ethnic-Albanian rebels, seeking to widen the conflict to an area hitherto unaffected, killed five government soldiers north-west of Skopje, the capital.

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If people in Macedonia and elsewhere in the western Balkans lose hope of ever joining the EU, says Macedonia's deputy prime minister, Ivica Bocevski, everybody should start worrying about regional stability.

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There is hopeful talk in western capitals of making more of new friendships with a younger generation of politicians that were forged or consolidated in the heat of the Kosovo war: for instance, Pandeli Majko and Ljupcho Georgievski, respective prime ministers of Albania and Macedonia, and Nadezhda Mihailova, Bulgaria's foreign minister.

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Later, after meeting Del Ponte, Macedonia's Prime Minister Ljubco Georgievski said that one investigation would focus on the activities of government forces in the village of Ljuboten near Skopje, where six ethnic Albanian civilians were killed in August.

CNN: Blast as Macedonia probe begins