|
Macedonia leader killed in plane crash Original Source Link: (May no longer be active)
http://www.cnn.com/2004/WORLD/europe/02/26/macedonia.crash/http://www.cnn.com/2004/WORLD/europe/02/26/macedonia.crash/
Macedonia leader killed in crash
SKOPJE, Macedonia --Macedonian President Boris Trajkovski, a moderate credited for helping to unite his ethnically divided country, has been killed in a plane crash in southeastern Bosnia.
Bosnian police said Thursday they had found wreckage of the U.S.-made Beechcraft Super King Air 200 twin-engine turboprop in mountains near the village of Pitulja, about 85 kilometers (50 miles) south of Sarajevo.
There were no survivors among Trajkovski, six of his aides and the two pilots, officials reported Thursday.
Government sources said air traffic controllers lost contact with the aircraft during poor weather conditions. It disappeared from radar at about 8 a.m. (0700 GMT) near the city of Stolac, Andrej Lepavcov, the president's chief of staff, told CNN.
Trajkovski, 47, was flying to the Bosnian city of Mostar for an international investment conference. The area where the plane disappeared from radar is about 20 miles (32 km) southeast of Mostar.
Bosnian President Dragan Covic told the Mostar conference in the early afternoon that search teams had recovered four of the nine bodies, The Associated Press reported.
"We today lost a friend ... our thoughts are with the families of the victims," Covic said as the gathering of about 2,000 participants observed a minute of silence. He called Trajkovski "irreplaceable."
Bosnian officials said they would launch an investigation into the accident. The government of the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, as the country is officially known, said it would hold an emergency session later on Thursday, .
Macedonian radio and television broadcast only classical music and urgent news items after announcing the crash.
Early condolences came from Dublin, where Irish Prime Minister Bertie Ahern was meeting a visiting Macedonian government delegation that was presenting an official application to join the European Union.
Ahern, the current EU president, said the presentation ceremony for the EU application had been canceled because of the "tragic news that President Boris Trajkovski has died in a plane crash over Bosnia."
Ahern also offered his "deep sympathy" to Macedonian Prime Minister Branko Crvenkovski, who shares powers with the presidency. (More reaction)
Trajkovski studied theology in the United States, where he gave up communism and converted from Orthodox Christianity to become an ordained Methodist minister.
Since his election in late 1999, Trajkovski's term has been marked by tensions between Slavic-speaking Macedonians and the former Yugoslav republic's large ethnic Albanian minority.
But he was widely respected in the country for his neutral stance and had called for a greater inclusion of ethnic Albanians in state bodies and institutions.
He presided over a NATO-brokered peace deal in 2001 that ended months of armed clashes and prevented a full-blown civil war in the mountainous state bordering Kosovo.
In early 1999, he was appointed Macedonia's deputy foreign minister. During the Kosovo crisis that year he accused NATO of paying too little attention to the ethnic tensions brewing in Macedonia, and the influx of 300,000 ethnic Albanian refugees.
The English-speaking former lawyer had been viewed in the West as a young leader with an international outlook and an ability to build contacts with foreign diplomats and politicians.
Trajkovski specialized in commercial and employment law and once headed the legal department of a construction company. He was married with a son and a daughter.
The mountainous Balkan region, combined with difficult winter weather conditions, can be hazardous for air travel.
In April 1996, a member of U.S. President Bill Clinton's cabinet, Commerce Secretary Ron Brown, was among 35 people killed when a U.S. Air Force passenger jet crashed into a mountain near Dubrovnik while trying to land on a trade mission.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Copyright 2004 CNN. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. Associated Press contributed to this report.
|
|
