Macedonia's Prime Minister Declares Victory

SKOPJE, Macedonia — Macedonia's prime minister declared victory yesterday in the Balkan country's parliamentary election after a vote that was marred by gunbattles that left one person dead and eight wounded.

Nikola Gruevski said his center-right VMRO-DPMNE had won enough votes yesterday to gain a majority of parliament's 120 seats. Final official results were still pending yeterday evening, but initial returns showed VMRO far ahead of the opposition Social Democrats and the opposition leader, Radmila Sekerinska, conceded defeat.

The prime minister described his win as a "historic victory," and headed to the capital's main square. Hundreds of supporters gathered, waving party flags and chanting his name.

Yesterday's violence was a blow to Macedonia's hopes of proving its credentials to join the European Union and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.

The violence in ethnic Albanian areas forced authorities to suspend voting in 22 polling stations — 1% of the country's total, a State Electoral Commission spokesman, Zoran Tanevski, said.

The government said voting would be repeated in those polling stations in two weeks.

"We are deeply concerned by the many ... corroborated reports of not only acts of intimidation, but also blatant violence, shooting, injuries to innocent people," the head of the European Union office in Macedonia, Erwan Fouere, told the Associated Press.

One person was killed and eight wounded in shootouts yesterday between rival ethnic Albanian groups or in standoffs with police, an Interior Ministry spokesman, Ivo Kotevski, said. Twenty-one people were arrested.

Ethnic Albanians make up about a quarter of Macedonia's 2.1 million people. Rebels fought a six-month insurgency in 2001 for more rights, but now the two main ethnic Albanian political parties are locked in bitter rivalry.

For weeks, the parties — the Democratic Union for Integration, led by former rebel leader Ali Ahmeti, and Menduh Thaci's Democratic Party of Albanians — have been embroiled in a frequently violent campaign.

Tensions have been high since the 2006 elections, when Mr. Gruevski picked the DPA as a governing coalition partner, even though it had won less votes than the DUI.

Mr. Ahmeti's DUI said it would not recognize election results in seven municipalities, including in the main ethnic Albanian town of Tetovo, in the country's northwest, because of the violence.