By Kole Casule
SKOPJE (Reuters) - Macedonian opposition leader Zoran Zaev indicated he would attend talks in Brussels next week to resolve a political crisis rocking the Balkan country after earlier questioning the impartiality of the European Union.
The EU plans to mediate talks on June 10 aimed at sealing a deal for early elections in Macedonia to end a standoff over a slew of damaging wiretap disclosures against the government.
But earlier on Friday, Zaev said he would not be attending, saying remarks made by EU enlargement commissioner Johannes Hahn, who is mediating the talks, contained "biased elements".
He singled out a remark by Hahn in Washington in which he said a report by election monitors on Macedonia's last parliamentary poll in 2014 was "in general a positive report".
Zaev disputed the assessment and said such comments were "inappropriate" ahead of the June 10 meeting, when one of the main outstanding issues is how the early election expected by end-April 2016 will be organised.
The European Commission later issued a statement saying Hahn and Zaev had spoken by phone and "clarified one issue". It said Hahn had repeated the observations of the election monitors from the OSCE, which included "a number of serious concerns" about the vote.
The opposition says the election was rigged and has been boycotting parliament ever since.
Zaev's Social Democrat party then issued its own statement saying the Commission had confirmed that the Brussels meeting would look at "organising a government to prepare elections".
The commission statement sent to media made no mention of a new government, one of the opposition's chief demands. But the Social Democrats nevertheless said it had "opened the opportunity for holding the meeting foreseen for June 10 in Brussels."