( Xinhua ) - An ethnic Albanian party in Macedonia called on Tuesday for parliament dissolution and early elections after the country failed to get an invitation to join NATO, news reaching here from Skopje reported on Tuesday.
"The resolution of the name dispute with Greece and some other issues require the engagement and function of the institutions with full capacity which the government lacks," a statement from Democratic Union for Integration (DUI) read.
DUI, Macedonia's main ethnic Albanian opposition party, called on other parliamentary parties to support its initiative to get the 120-seat parliament dissolved, which requires more than 61 votes.
Ethnic Albanians account for a quarter of Macedonia's 2 million population, and ethnic Albanian rebels fought a brief war against government forces in 2001.
Albania's Prime Minister Sali Berisha warned on Monday that a dispute between Greece and Macedonia that blocked the latter from being invited to join NATO last week could lead to instability.
The continued lack of a solution could encourage radical ethnic groups in Macedonia, and that would "become a problem for the region," Berisha warned.
Last week NATO leaders agreed at a summit in Romania to invite Albania and Croatia to join the alliance. But Greece blocked Macedonia's invitation.
Athens says the country's name implies a territorial claim to a northern Greek province called Macedonia, and says it cannot allow its northern neighbor to join until the name issue is resolved.