Trajkovski: Macedonia's peacemaker
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Trajkovski converted to Methodism and became an ordained minister.
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Trajkovsky killed in air crash in Bosnia. Journalist Samir Krilic reports
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(CNN) -- Macedonian President Boris Trajkovski, who has died in a plane crash, was a moderate credited for helping to unite his ethnically divided country amid the bubbling, often bloody politics of the Balkans.
In early 1999, he was appointed the former Yugoslav republic's deputy foreign minister. During the Kosovo crisis of that year he accused NATO of paying too little attention to the ethnic tensions brewing in Macedonia, and the influx of 300,000 ethnic Albanian refugees.
His stark prediction soon came true. After becoming president later that year his term of office was soon marked by tensions between Slavic-speaking Orthodox Christians and the country's large ethnic Albanian minority.
He presided over a NATO-brokered peace deal in 2001 that ended months of armed clashes between the two groups and was viewed by the West as having prevented a full-blown civil war in the mountainous state bordering Kosovo.
But the 47-year-old former lawyer was often also severely criticized because he was perceived as being too lenient, too accommodating with the frequently oppressed Muslim minority.
In an interview in 2000 Trajkovski demonstrated that willingness to work with all ethnic groups. "Macedonia has proven itself a country that understands the needs of the various nationalities," he said.
When the Muslim insurgents turned in some of their weapons, right wing opponents criticized Trajkovski for being too willing to grant the rebels amnesty.
More recently the westward-looking Trajkovsky spearheaded Macedonia's bid to join the European Union. His country was due formally to submit its application for membership to the EU in Dublin on Thursday.
Almost immediately after the news the Macedonian president's airplane had crashed into a mountain in a dense fog, the tributes began coming in.
In Brussels, NATO Secretary-General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer praised Trajkovski, saying he "demonstrated great leadership to preserve the unity of his country when it was under threat," The Associated Press reported.
And European Commission chief Romano Prodi said "it was a very sad day for Macedonia that loses a wise and balanced leader. A very sad day for the Balkan region for whose integration he had spent so much effort. And a very sad day for Europe that loses a friend and a supporter of the values of tolerance on which our union is based."
The Macedonian president's death is likely to disrupt the delicate balance between Muslims and Christians, according to Balkan analysts. One said: "It could be extremely destabilizing," in a country where peace was at best very fragile.
Before entering politics Trajkovski studied theology in the United States, where he gave up communism and converted from Orthodox Christianity to become an ordained Methodist minister.
Returning to his native Macedonia, he later specialized in commercial and employment law and once headed the legal department of a construction company. He was married with a son and a daughter.
-- CNN's Senior International Correspondent Walter Rodgers contributed to this report.
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Associated Press contributed to this report.
