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Captain Dappet
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Joined: 06 Feb 2002
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Location: On my supersonic rocket ship.
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 Thu Feb 26, 2004 11:40 am President Boris Trajkovski dead |
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| Quote: | Macedonia leader dead in crash
Trajkovski had been Macedonian president since 1999
Macedonian President Boris Trajkovski has died in a plane crash in Bosnia-Hercegovina, officials say.
The plane, with eight others on board, came down in heavy rain and thick fog in mountains near the town of Stolac.
Emergency services searched for the plane, helped by Nato peacekeepers, after it vanished from radar screens.
The BBC's Nick Hawton in Sarajevo says Mr Trajkovski was seen as a key figure who helped broker a peace deal with ethnic Albanian rebels in 2001.
Hours after the crash, Nato peacekeepers said they were still hunting for the wreckage and that no bodies had been recovered. Authorities said they still considered the plane to be officially "missing".
"The area is mountainous and heavily mined with few roads and when you couple this with weather and the size of the search area it makes the operation incredibly challenging and difficult," said Nato spokesman Dave Sullivan.
Parliament speaker Ljubco Jordanovski will serve as acting president, Macedonian officials say.
Security has been tightened along the country's borders and at key state and army institutions.
Crash site
A spokesman for US peacekeepers in Bosnia said the plane lost contact with air-traffic controllers near the border between Bosnia and Montenegro.
Stolac is in a mountainous region of southern Bosnia, east of the Croatian port of Dubrovnik.
A witness near the scene told AP news agency that teams of de-mining experts were headed to the site - which suggests the plane may have crashed in an area littered with landmines from Bosnia's 1992-95 civil war.
The plane took off from the Macedonian capital, Skopje, earlier on Thursday.
Mr Trajkovski and a group of advisers were on their way to an investment conference in Mostar.
The nine dead included seven conference delegates and two pilots. The delegates were believed to include senior advisers to the president.
EU ambitions
Boris Trajkovski was travelling to an international conference
International tributes were paid to the moderate leader.
Javier Solana, the European Union's foreign and security affairs chief, called it "a very tragic day for Macedonia, for all the people of that country but also for many people in Europe".
"President Trajkovski was a great man, a man of passion, a man who moved his country forward, not only the reforms but also to get it as close as possible to Europe," Mr Solana said in a statement.
Irish Prime Minister Bertie Ahern, whose country holds the EU's rotating presidency, described Mr Trajkovski as having "contributed hugely to reconciliation in Macedonia" and as a strong supporter of Macedonia's ambition to become an EU member.
Only on Wednesday he signed Macedonia's formal application to join the EU, which was due to be submitted to the EU's Irish presidency in Dublin on Thursday.
That event has now been postponed.
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Bad news for Macedonia. 
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