President of Macedonia killed in plane crash

MACEDONIA'S president, a moderate credited with helping to unite his ethnically-divided country, was killed yesterday when his plane crashed in bad weather in mountainous southern Bosnia.

Boris Trajkovski was en route to an international investment conference in the western Bosnian city of Mostar, when his plane carrying six other officials and two pilots went down near the village of Bitonja, in mountainous southern Bosnia, shortly after 8am. There were no survivors.

Bosnian police said they found wreckage of the US-made Beechcraft Super King Air 200 twin-engine turboprop near the village about 50 miles south of the capital, Sarajevo.

Bosnian President Dragan Covic told the Mostar conference search teams had recovered four bodies, saying "We today lost a friend," before the gathering of about 2,000 participants observed a minute of silence.

A Bosnian commission is to investigate the cause of the accident and Macedonia's government planned to convene an emergency session later in the day.

Macedonia's Defence Ministry said security was beefed up along the country's borders and at key state and army institutions, while Parliament speaker Ljubco Jordanovski will serve as acting president.

An AP photographer near the scene said five teams of demining experts were headed to the crash site, suggesting the plane may have gone down in an area littered with land mines left over from Bosnia's devastating 1992-95 war.

Rain, heavy cloud cover and thick fog in the area had prompted Albania's prime minister, Fatos Nano, to cancel his own flight to the conference. He also expressed his condolences.

Macedonia was to formally submit its application for eventual EU membership yesterday in Dublin, but cancelled the presentation and recalled its delegation.

Taoiseach Bertie Ahern described Mr Trajkovski as having "contributed hugely to reconciliation in Macedonia," and as a strong supporter of Macedonia's EU membership ambitions.

"Today should have been one of celebration for him," Mr Ahern said.

NATO Secretary-General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer expressed condolences, saying Mr Trajkovski "demonstrated great leadership to preserve the unity of his country when it was under threat".

Mr Trajkovski, aged 47, studied theology in the US, where he gave up communism and converted from Orthodox Christianity, becoming an ordained Methodist minister.

He was elected president in November 1999 and his powers were divided with the prime minister's.

He was widely respected in Macedonia for his neutral stance in the former Yugoslav republic, where tensions persist between Macedonians and the country's ethnic Albanian minority following a 2001 war.

He had called for greater inclusion of ethnic Albanians in state bodies and institutions.

Javier Solana, the EU's foreign and security affairs chief, said, "(He) was a great man, a man of passion, who moved his country forward, not only the reforms but also to get it as close as possible to Europe."

Mr Trajkovski is survived by his wife and their son and daughter.

Before assuming the presidency, he served as a deputy foreign minister in the centre-right government of former Prime Minister Ljubco Georgievski.