title: Macedonia's largest opposition party appoints new leader
text: SKOPJE (Reuters) - Macedonia s main opposition party, the rightist VMRO-DPMNE formally replaced its leader Nikola Gruevski on Saturday and appointed Hristijan Mickoski, a technocrat, as his successor. Gruevski, 47, resigned earlier this month following an election defeat last year and unrest that rocked the small Balkan country in April.     In his speech to the party s convention on Saturday, Gruevski said that a key reason for VMRO-DPMNE s fall from power was his refusal to yield to what he described as international and domestic pressure to accept a compromise in a dispute with Greece.    Macedonia, which won independence in 1991 from then-federal Yugoslavia, has made little progress towards EU and NATO membership due to a long-running dispute with Greece which claims Macedonia s name represents a territorial claim to its province with the same name.    We wanted a fair compromise and a name solution, but not under dictate,  Gruevski said. Gruevski s successor Mickoski, 41, a relative novice in politics, became VMRO-DPMNE Secretary General earlier this year. He served in Gruevski s government as the general manager of ELEM, Macedonia s state-owned power plants managing company. (This story corrects spelling to Mickoski in paras 1 and 6.) 