SKOPJE - Macedonia's parliament convened on Thursday to debate its dissolution and possible early legislative elections as proposed by an opposition ethnic Albanian party.
The session was scheduled after the ruling VMRO-DPMNE party of Prime Minister Nikola Gruevski backed the request of the Democratic Union for Integration (DUI).
If the motion is approved by parliament, the elections could be held in mid-June, less than two years after the tiny Balkan country's previous legislative polls.
The motion was submitted to parliament a week after Macedonia's bid to join NATO was blocked by Greece in a long-running row over the right to the name Macedonia, which is shared by a northern Greek province.
Gruevski's government had already been in crisis after another ethnic Albanian party, the Democratic Party for Albanians (DPA), left the coalition for 10 days in mid-March before deciding to return.
The DPA's decision to withdraw from the government had been made in protest at Skopje's failure to recognise Kosovo, a disputed ethnic Albanian-majority province of neighbouring Serbia that declared independence in February.
The parliamentary debate has no time limit and could last for up to several days.
Macedonia, a former republic of the communist Yugoslavia, has an ethnic Albanian minority that makes up around 25 percent of its population of two million.
jmi-ks/dv/gk
04/10/2008 15:06 GMT