SKOPJE, June 1 (Reuters) - Macedonians vote on Sunday in a
parliamentary election seen as a test of the Balkan country's
political maturity after campaign violence raised fears its slow
march toward European Union membership could be further delayed.
 

The conservative VMRO-DPMNE party of Prime Minister Nikola
Gruevski is expected to win, riding a wave of nationalism after
Greece blocked a NATO invitation to Macedonia in April in a
17-year row over the name it shares with a Greek province.
 

His government, which will likely have to include a partner
from the ethnic Albanian minority parties, will be asked to get
NATO accession back on track, start EU membership talks and calm
tensions after weeks of violence among rival Albanian factions.
 

"This Sunday we have a great opportunity," Gruevski said,
"with fair and democratic elections, with no incidents, no
problems, we can help Macedonia and move forward."
 

Gruevski's previous coalition was in office for less than
two years. It was divided over reforms and rights for the
country's 25 percent Albanian minority before it was dealt a
final blow by the NATO snub.
 

President Branko Crvenkovski also appealed for calm, saying
"the first step, the first criteria on the road to the EU and
NATO is to have peaceful, fair and democratic elections."
 

The EU ambassador in Macedonia, Erwan Fouere, said Brussels
would assess the election before setting a date for entry talks,
and "expected the country to show political maturity".
Some 1.77 million people are entitled to vote from the
country's 2 million population. Polls open at 7 a.m. (0500 GMT)
and close at 7 p.m., and the voting will be overseen by some
2,000 local and more than 460 foreign monitors.
 

UNFULFILLED PROMISES
 

The West is worried about instability in the Balkans so soon
after Kosovo Albanians seceded from Serbia in February, the last
shudder in a region that saw a decade of conflict in the 1990s
with the collapse of Yugoslavia.
 

All-out ethnic war in Macedonia was averted in 2001 with
promises of quick admission to the Western mainstream.
 

They have gone largely unfulfilled: ethnic relations are
better but the country is still poor, its NATO and EU bids
hamstrung by the dispute with Greece, which objects to its name
because its northernmost province is also called "Macedonia".
 

Macedonians refuse to compromise their identity to appease
Athens. Ethnic Albanians, however, are getting impatient, seeing
Macedonian insistence on the name as romantic nationalism that
could undermine their own rights.
 

Poverty and frustration is fuelling competition for the
Albanian vote, spilling over into minor armed incidents between
the Democratic Party of Albanians and the Democratic Union for
Integration (DIU) of former guerrilla leader Ali Ahmeti.
 

Analysts said great care was needed in the post-election
coalition building so as not to foment divisions like in 2006,
when the DUI, which won most of the Albanian votes, was left out
of the government in favour of their bitter rival, the DPA.
 "If one keeps dividing the Albanians, they are not only
contributing to their backwardness but also causing Macedonia to
be permanently destabilized," said analyst  Mentor Nazarko.