Boris Trajkovski

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Boris (Kiril) Trajkovski (June 25, 1956 - February 26, 2004) (Борис Трајковски in Cyrillic) was a president of the Republic of Macedonia (1999 - 2004).

Born in the village of Murtino, near the Macedonian town of Strumica, from a Methodist family, Trajkovski graduated in 1980 with a degree in law from the St. Cyril and Methodius University in Skopje. He subsequently specialized in commercial and employment law and made several visits to the United States, where he studied theology to become a Methodist lay minister.

After he finished his studies, the Communist government confined him for a time to a remote village owing to his religious activities. There he took care of an impoverished Roma parish of the Methodist Church. Following political liberalisation in the 1980s, he went on to head the legal department of the Sloboda construction company in Skopje.

Trajkovski became active in politics following the Republic of Macedonia's declaration of independence from Yugoslavia in 1992, when he joined the VMRO-DPMNE party. He played an important role in developing the party's relations with other European political parties and was appointed Chairman of the party's Foreign Relations Commission. In 1997, he became the Chief of Staff of the Mayor of Kisela Voda, a municipality in Skopje. He was appointed Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs on December 21, 1998 but served in this post for less than a year.

Largely because of his reputation as a moderate reformist, Trajkovski was selected as VMRO-DPMNE's candidate for president in the November 1999 election held to replace the outgoing president, Kiro Gligorov. In the presidential election of November 14 1999, Trajkovski defeated Tito Petkovski by 52% to 45%. He was scheduled to take office just five days later, on November 19, but because the results were disputed, parliamentary chairman Savo Klimovski became acting president until Petkovski's supporters lost their last appeal a month later.

Trajkovski's term was marked by tensions between ethnic Macedonians and the republic's large ethnic Albanian minority. The aftermath of the Kosovo War led to months of violent armed clashes between Macedonian security forces and Albanian rebels seeking independence. Although his powers were limited and his role largely ceremonial, he presided over a NATO-brokered peace deal in 2001 that ended the violence and prevented a full-blown civil war in Macedonia. He was seen as a moderate in the ethnic dialogue, arguing for greater inclusion of ethnic Albanians, and has been credited with being a key figure in resolving the conflict.

In 2002 he was awarded the World Methodist Peace Award for his role in promoting peace and political stability.

Trajkovski died on February 26 2004 in a plane crash en route to an economic conference in Mostar, Bosnia and Herzegovina. The aircraft, a Beech 200 Super King Air, crashed in very poor weather (thick fog and heavy rain) on a mountainside in southeastern Herzegovina, near the villages of Huskovici and Rotimlja some eight miles (15km) south-south-east of Mostar. Eight other people were also aboard but none survived the impact, which broke the aircraft into three pieces. It came down in an area that had been heavily mined during the Bosnian War of the 1990s, which significantly hampered the rescue and recovery effors.

Although the cause of the crash is not known, it seems likely that it was the result of a controlled flight into terrain, possibly exacerbated by alleged mistakes made by the SFOR air traffic controllers at Mostar Ortijes International Airport. The approach to the airport's Runway 34 has been criticised by pilots for being difficult to handle, and as the runway is not equipped with precision landing systems, it is especially challenging in bad weather. The crash is not the first major air accident to kill a politician in southern Herzegovina: on April 3, 1996, the United States Secretary of Commerce Ronald Brown was killed while en route from Bosnia to Croatia.

Boris Trajkovski is survived by his wife Vilma and their two children, daughter Sara and son Stefan.

External links

• Official website of the President of Macedonia (http://www.president.gov.mk)

• The Boris Trajkovski International Foundation (http://www.boristrajkovski.org)bg:Борис Трайковски

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