US diplomat Matthew Palmer called on the Zaev regime to stop up the fight against corruption, while still insisting that census should take place and that the opposition should not boycott the Parliament.

The better job the Government does in fighting corruption, the more they get that problem under control, the more other countries, including NATO allies, will look at Macedonia as a place where they want to invest, Palmer said in an interview with Voice of America.

The Zaev regime is hit by a series of corruption scandals which are largely left uninvestigated, while the judiciary is focused mainly on persecuting opposition officials.

In the interview, Palmer said that he hopes the EU will soon allow Macedonia to open its accession talks, that are currently blocked by Buglaria, which demands major concessions from Macedonia on issues of history and national identity. Palmer called on Macedonia and Bulgaria to resolve the issue and not raise it at the level of NATO.

What we would like to see is (North) Macedonia and Bulgaria working in dialogue to resolve issues in the bilateral relationship keeping those issues out of multilateral formats including NATO and in particular right now the European Union, the assistant deputy secretary said.

As quoted by VOA, Palmer called on Macedonia to hold the census. He intervened last week to ask VMRO-DPMNE leader Hristijan Mickoski to support the census initiated by Prime Minister Zaev and his Albanian allies. Yesterday, Zaev agreed to Mickoski’s demand that the census is postponed for September, despite protests from the Albanian parties, who are now hoping for a new US intervention so that the census goes ahead. An element of the agreement is that VMRO provides a quorum for some of the legislative agenda pushed by Zaev, and Palmer reiterated this call.

What’s important is that the opposition shows up for Parliament. That’s their job. Boycotts, blockades, not doing their job, none of those are conducive to progress, the diplomat said.

Regarding the utter failure of the Zaev regime to procure vaccines, in part due to Zaev’s early insistence that he will only purchase Western produced vaccines, Palmer said that any Western help will come through the slow and unreliable Covax mechanism.

The US is not engaged in this kind of vaccine diplomacy. Russia and China are using the vaccines as instruments of influence in a manner that I think is deeply problematic. The US is supporting the multilateral mechanisms, in particular the Covax mechanism, Palmer added.