Macedonia culture minister resigns over play about communist

SKOPJE, Macedonia-Macedonia's Culture Minister Ilirian Beqiri resigned Monday over a play about Yugoslavia's late communist leader Josip Broz Tito.

Beqiri, 39, resigned after imposing a brief ban on the play "Tito, Certain Diagrams of Desire" before it opened Saturday in the southern city of Bitola.

Beqiri, a prominent member of the ethnic Albanian DPA party in the conservative coalition, described the play as being against the "national interest."

The ban was lifted after the play's director publicly complained.

Government spokesman Ivica Bocevski said the government was in talks with the DPA to select Beqiri's successor.

Tito ruled Yugoslavia for 35 years, until his death in 1980.