Macedonian President killed in plane crash

[Sazz]

LEADER KILLED IN CRASH

The Macedonian President has been killed in a plane crash in southern Bosnia.

The plane carrying Boris Trajkovski disappeared from radar screens early this morning near the border between Bosnia and Montenegro.


Irish Prime Minister Bertie Ahern, who was due to meet Macedonia's prime minister in Dublin, confirmed the leader's death.

He said his meeting had been cancelled "because of tragic news that President Boris Trajkovski had died in a plane crash over Bosnia".

A spokesman for Trajkovski's party, VMRO-DPMNE, said he was told by party headquarters in Skopje that the 47-year-old leader was killed in the crash as he travelled to an international investment conference.

Earlier, a Bosnian government official said the plane had gone down near Stolac - amid mountains east of Croatia's Adriatic port of Dubrovnik.

"The president was in the plane with several staff members. A chopper is on its way," the source said.

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, Nano spokesman Aldrin Dalipi said.

Trajkovski, 47, was elected in 1999 and was educated in the United States. An ordained Methodist minister who studied law, his powers were divided with those of Macedonia's Prime Minister.

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 2002 war.

from sky news