SKOPJE, Feb 26: Macedonian President Boris Trajkovski was killed on Thursday when his plane crashed into Bosnian mountains in thick fog, officials said. His death was confirmed by Irish Prime Minister Bertie Ahern, who was holding talks in Dublin with Macedonia's prime minister.

The 47-year-old Trajkovski, whose tenure was marked by a crisis in 2001 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.

Macedonian officials described the president's plane as an aging executive jet with nine people aboard. It disappeared from radar screens about 9am (0800 GMT).

No survivors were found in the wreckage near Stolac, Bosnian radio quoted local official Nedzad Vejzagic as saying. It is an area of treacherous winter skies for aviation amid mountains east and north of Croatia's Adriatic port of Dubrovnik.

The official Macedonian Information Centre said the plane that went down had "several times" nearly cost officials their lives. A source in the capital Skopje said it was a twin-engined Beechcraft 200 Super King Air bought second-hand in the 1970s.

"The weather conditions were very bad with heavy fog and rain," said Zoran Glusac, a spokesman for the Bosnian Serb interior ministry. Police were sent to the crash site on Hrgut mountain, between Stolac and the village of Ljubinje. The US-led Nato peacekeeping force in Bosnia, which has helicopters, said it was on standby in case help was requested.

From his election in late 1999, Mr 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. -Reuters