BITONJA, Bosnia-Herzegovina (AP) - Macedonian President Boris Trajkovski, a moderate leader who helped unite his ethnically divided country, was missing and presumed dead Thursday after his plane crashed in thick fog, the Macedonian government said.
The president's party initially said he died in the crash, which happened in a remote, rocky area of mountainous southern Bosnia - treacherous in the bad weather and also heavily mined from Bosnia's 1992-95 war.
However, NATO peacekeepers said the wreckage had not been located, contrary to a report by Bosnian police, and Macedonia's government said the president was officially considered "missing" and presumed dead.
Bosnia declared Friday a day of mourning, classical music was played on Macedonian state radio, and messages of condolences poured in from world leaders.
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(AP) Two girls light candles to pay last respects to Macedonia's President Boris Trajkovski, in front of...
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Trajkovski's presumed death came at a critical time for Macedonia, a tiny Balkan republic still tense after six months of ethnic conflict in 2001. Trajkovski, 47, had been widely hailed for his efforts to get Macedonians and rival ethnic Albanians to live together in peace.
European Union and NATO leaders urged Macedonia's government to carry on Trajkovski's work to secure lasting stability in the country. "It is going to be very difficult for the people of Macedonia to fill that gap," said EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana.
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, officials said. There were no survivors, they said.
Bosnian police said they found wreckage of the U.S.-made Beechcraft Super King Air 200 twin-engine turboprop near the village about 50 miles south of Sarajevo. But Capt. Dave Sullivan, a spokesman for NATO-led peacekeepers, later denied that the wreckage had been located, and police backed away from their earlier statement.
Trajkovski 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 after a 2001 war. He had called for a great inclusion of ethnic Albanians in state bodies and institutions.
"We today lost a friend," Bosnian President Dragan Covic told the conference as the gathering of about 2,000 participants observed a minute of silence.
Macedonia's government planned an emergency session later in the day, and said Parliament speaker Ljubco Jordanovski would serve as acting president. The Defense Ministry said security was tightened along Macedonia's borders and at key state and army institutions.
In Bosnia, an AP photographer near the scene said teams of explosives experts headed to the crash site, suggesting the plane may have gone down in an area littered with land mines left over from Bosnia's war.
Macedonia's civil aviation authority said Trajkovski's plane had been in full working condition and was flown by an experienced pilot. Yet rain, heavy cloud cover and thick fog in the area had prompted Albania's prime minister, Fatos Nano, to cancel his flight to the conference.
Macedonia was to formally submit its application for membership in the European Union on Thursday in Ireland; with Trajkovski's apparent death, it canceled the presentation and called its delegation back from Dublin.
NATO Secretary-General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer paid tribute to Trajkovski, saying he "demonstrated great leadership to preserve the unity of his country when it was under threat."
"In difficult circumstances, and in the face of opposition from many, he guided the peace process in the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia," de Hoop Scheffer said.
A Methodist minister, Trajkovski studied theology in the United States, where he converted from Orthodox Christianity. He was elected in November 1999, the second president in Macedonia's history.
His first major challenge came during Serbia's crackdown on ethnic Albanians in neighboring Kosovo, when hundreds of thousands of them fled across Macedonia's northern border from the troops of former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic in the 1999 Kosovo war.
Trajkovski promptly called on the international community to aid Macedonia and help the Kosovo refugees. The country opened its borders and homes, and allowed NATO to station troops there in preparation for punishing airstrikes against Serbia over Kosovo.
An even bigger challenge for Trajkovski came when Macedonia's ethnic Albanians launched an insurgency in 2001 to fight for more rights for their minority, which comprises a quarter of the country's 2 million people.
Through six months of bitter fighting, Trajkovski calmly steered the nation toward the Western-brokered peace deal that ended the conflict and urged reconciliation between the two ethnic communities.
Born in 1956 in the Macedonian village of Strumica, Trajkovski earned his law degree in the capital, Skopje.
He entered politics in 1998 and served as deputy foreign minister on the ballot of the center-right party of former Prime Minister Ljubco Georgievski.
Trajkovski was elected president in a narrow win against a candidate of the reformed communists, securing a five-year tenure with only about 70,000 votes, mostly through the support of ethnic Albanians.
He succeeded a popular national hero, Kiro Gligorov, who achieved the country's independence from the former Yugoslavia in 1991 without the bloodshed and atrocities that later marked the wars in Bosnia and Croatia.
