Macedonia authorities allege opposition plot to topple government

SKOPJE (Reuters) - Police in Macedonia said on Saturday they would charge four people with trying to overthrow the government, including - according to one senior government official - the leader of the main opposition Social Democrats.

Police said the plot involved trying to gather intelligence against the government and blackmailing Prime Minister Nikola Gruevski to dissolve his cabinet and call a snap election.

A senior government official who declined to be named told Reuters that one of the suspects was Zoran Zaev, leader of the Social Democrats, who appeared defiant in comments on Macedonian website A1on.

"This is a clear attempt by the government to prevent the publication of their crimes and all the evil that this government has done," A1on quoted Zaev as saying.

The prospect of his imprisonment threatens to further deepen political divisions in the former Yugoslav republic, with the Social Democrats boycotting parliament for almost a year since alleging fraud in the last parliamentary election.

"For the first time since independence, the Ministry of Interior has realised a case in which we have stopped an attempt to threaten the constitutional order - the undemocratic seizure of power," Interior Ministry spokesman Ivo Kotevski told a news conference.

Kotevski did not identify the suspects by name but said they included a former chief of intelligence, his wife and a 40-year-old leader of a political party from the city of Strumica in eastern Macedonia, a description that fits Zaev.

Kotevski said that three of the suspects were in custody and that police would submit criminal charges.

Zaev had not been arrested and could not immediately be reached for comment.

Zaev's Social Democrats are the chief rivals to the conservative VMRO-DPMNE party of Prime Minister Nikola Gruevski, who has been in power since mid-2006.

The Social Democrats alleged fraud in the election last March and have boycotted parliament since.

Macedonia, a landlocked Balkan country of 2 million people, wants to join NATO and the European Union but progress has been slowed by a dispute with neighbouring Greece over Macedonia's name, which it shares with a northern Greek province.

(Writing by Matt Robinson; Editing by Hugh Lawson)

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