Plane carrying Macedonia president 'lost'

A plane carrying Macedonia’s president Boris Trajkovski to an international investment conference in Bosnia disappeared from radar, US officials said.

The Macedonian government aircraft, carrying the president to the conference in the western Bosnian city of Mostar, lost contact with air traffic controllers near the border between Bosnia and Montenegro, said Capt Ben Thorp, a spokesman for US peacekeepers in Bosnia.

Officials said it was too early to determine whether the plane had crashed.

Trajkovski's Cabinet chief, Andrej Lepavcov, said the European air traffic monitoring agency informed Macedonia's government that the president's plane had "disappeared off the radar screens".

“We know nothing beyond that at this point,” he said.

Trajkovski, 47, was elected in 1999 and was educated in the United States.

An ordained Methodist minister who studied law, his powers are divided with those of Macedonia’s prime minister.

He is 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 2002 war.

The weather in the area was said to be poor and it prompted Albania's prime minister, Fatos Nano, to delay his own flight to the conference.

Macedonia was to formally submit its application for eventual membership of the European Union in Ireland today, but cancelled the presentation and called its delegation back from Dublin, officials said.