Talat Xhaferi reacts on the day the North Macedonian parliament voted him as the first Albanian prime minister since the country became independent.—ReutersSKOPJE: North Macedonia’s parliament elected Talat Xhaferi as caretaker prime minister on Sunday, making the 61-year-old the first ethnic Albanian to lead the Balkan country’s government. Around a quarter of North Macedonia’s 1.8 million inhabitants are ethnic Albanians. But ever since the country’s 1991 declaration of independence from former Yugoslavia, tensions persisted between the majority population and ethnic Albanian minority. The tensions even erupted into a six-month armed conflict between ethnic Albanian rebels and government forces in 2001, which only ended through the intervention of the international community. Representatives of the ethnic Albanian community have been elected or appointed on high state positions before but have never led the government.
