BESA party leader Bilal Kasami rejected the invitation from DUI leader Ali Ahmeti to attend a joint celebration of the 2001 Ohrid peace treaty. Ahmeti’s initiative is a repainted version of his push for a pan-Albanian platform that would’ve put his DUI party at the center.

The INA news agency reports that Kasami has decided not to attend the meeting planned for Thursday in the Park hotel. As the leader of the terrorist UCK/NLA organization, Ahmeti would have been presented as a heroic wartime leader at the event in front of his competitors in the Albanian political bloc.

SDSM party leader Zoran Zaev, who also campaigned for the Albanian vote and whose party won two seats for ethnic Albanian candidates, besides the four seats won by its coalition partner BESA, was not invited. Zaev called the move a snub and threatened that he may try to unify the Macedonian political bloc, an idea promptly rejected by VMRO-DPMNE leader Hristijan Mickoski.