Macedonian President Boris Trajkovski, mourned by Balkan leaders as a peacemaker who averted civil war, was killed Thursday when his small, turbo-prop aircraft crashed into a Bosnian mountainside in thick fog.  

"At 8:15 am (0715 GMT), the air-control facility of the NATO-led Multinational Stabilization Force in Bosnia and Hezegovina informed Bosnian local air-control said they have lost radar contact with the Macedonian President's plane," Tanjug News Agency based in Belgrade cited Dragan Covic, the current president of the Bosnia's tripartite presidency, as saying.

Covic said nine people were aboard the doomed airplane. All were feared dead.

Trajkovski's death was confirmed by Irish Prime Minister Bertie Ahern, who was to have held talks in Dublin with Macedonia's prime minister on the day of the country's formal application to join the European Union.

A Bosnian official said the wreck had been found and there were no survivors aboard.

But a Trajkovski aide said there would be no confirmation "until a body is identified."

Macedonian radio and television broadcast only solemn music. 47-year-old Trajkovski had been on a short flight to the Bosnian town of Mostar for an economic conference.

A Christian preacher of the Methodist faith and career lawyer, he made his name internationally during a crisis with ethnic Albanian rebels that brought the former Yugoslav republic to the brink of civil war in 2001. With NATO help, he oversaw a peace deal.

Bosnian officials, who earlier gave a later crash time, said the aircraft seemed to go down south of Stolac, inland from the Croatian port of Dubrovnik, a treacherous zone for aviation in winter.

Macedonian officials described the president's plane as an ageing Beechcraft 200 Super King Air twin-engined turboprop with two crew members and six presidential aides on board.

The official Macedonian Information Centre said Trajkovski's plane "several times'' had narrowly missed costing officials their lives. A Bosnian official added that "weather conditions were very bad with heavy fog and rain'' Thursday morning.

US-led Nato peacekeeping force helicopters in Bosnia, helping rescuers and police, were spotted hovering over a steep mountainside but no wreckage was visible and access was restricted. Local people said the area may still be mined from the days of the Balkan wars in the 1990s.

From his election in late 1999, Trajkovski's term was marked by tensions between Slavic-speaking Macedonians and the former Yugoslav republic's large ethnic Albanian minority.

Although his powers were limited and his role largely ceremonial, 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.

Macedonian Prime Minister Branko Crvenkovski will retain the main powers.

Former NATO chief George Robertson, who worked closely with Trajkovski during months of clashes in 2001, said the president had helped save the country from a Bosnian-style bloodbath.

"This is a real tragedy for Macedonia and for Europe,'' said Robertson.

EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana, who also undertook intense shuttle diplomacy to end the fighting, described Trajkovski as a friend and a man of passion.

European Commission President Romano Prodi said his end was all the more bitter for happening on the day his country was to make its formal application to join the wealthy bloc.

Trajkovski was married with a son and a daughter.

(China Daily February 27, 2004)