Posted on 02/26/2004 7:03:20 PM PST by ambrose
Macedonian President killed in Balkans jet crash
27.02.2004
SKOPJE - Macedonian President Boris Trajkovski was killed yesterday when his plane crashed into Bosnian mountains in thick fog.
His death was confirmed by Irish Prime Minister Bertie Ahern, who was holding European Union talks with Macedonia's Prime Minister in Dublin.
The 47-year-old President, whose tenure was marked by the 2001 crisis with ethnic Albanian rebels that brought the former Yugoslav republic to the brink of civil war, had been on a short flight to the Bosnian city of Mostar for an economic conference.
A Government source in the Macedonian capital, Skopje, said the executive jet had gone down "somewhere near Stolac", a zone of treacherous winter skies for aviation amid mountains east and north of Croatia's Adriatic port of Dubrovnik.
Several staff members were also aboard, he said.
Local police reported an explosion in the mountains between Stolac and the village of Ljubinje.
Zoran Glusac, a spokesman for the Bosnian Serb Interior Ministry, said the weather was very bad with heavy fog and rain.
Police were sent to the crash site on Hrgut mountain.
The US-led Nato peacekeeping force in Bosnia, which has helicopters, said it was on standby in case help was requested.
Macedonian Prime Minister Branko Crvenkovski was already in Dublin when news of the crash was announced. He was on a mission to formally deliver his country's application to join the European Union, of which Ireland holds the presidency at the moment.
Journalists travelling with him were told to be ready for an immediate flight back to Macedonia.
The mountainous Balkan region, combined with difficult winter weather, can be hazardous for air travel.
In April 1996, a member of US President Bill Clinton's cabinet, Commerce Secretary Ron Brown, was among 35 people killed when a US Air Force passenger jet crashed into a mountain in the same area.
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.
Prime Minister Crvenkovski will retain the main powers.
Mark Laity, a Nato official seconded as an adviser to Trajkovski in May 2001 and who worked in his Cabinet until the Essential Harvest operation to disarm warring groups four months later, said he was devastated by the news:
"In 2001 no Macedonian was more important to stopping that country having a civil war.
"He was controversial ... but in the end he was a person who could always be relied on to do the right thing."
Almost...
Hello Mr Fusion
I know you are rather busy in Bosnia these days tracking down Dr Karadzic and reshaping the Balkans according to the neo-conservative mandate, but I was wondering if you might be able to comment on this event? I remember you wrote much about the liberation of the Tetovo Republic in this space during the conflict in 2001...
And you spent a good deal of time wandering between the Tetovo Republic and Tirana last year. You vowed then to finish the job versus Skopje I am told...
I also seem to recall you and the one you refer to as the "Hawk" were on the ground in Dubrovnik about 24 hours after Ron Brown's plane crashed there. Those photos you published in Albania Briefings got a lot of people upset then...
So please Sir, share with us the same insight you shared with Mr Nano's people recently about the coming ANA war of national liberation. How will this shocking event impact this battle?
Westerby
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