Sudan VP's plane said to disappear
(AP)
Updated: 2005-08-01 08:58

A plane carrying the former rebel who ascended to Sudan's No. 2 leadership post has disappeared after losing contact, a Sudanese Cabinet minister said Monday on state television, contradicting earlier reports, Associated Press reported.

The statement came hours after state television interrupted its regular programming to say that Vice President John Garang "has landed safely at a camp in southern Sudan" after his flight from Uganda was reported missing in bad weather on Sunday.

Communications Minister Abdel-Basit Sabdarat said Sudan's president had ordered the country's air force to search for the aircraft.

Former rebel leader John Garang speaks at the European Parliament in Brussels in this Saturday March 5, 2005 file photo. [AP/file]

"Up to now we do not have any concrete new information about the whereabouts of the plane," said Sabdarat, who also is the government spokesman.

He also said the plane left Uganda on Saturday evening, leaving it uncertain exactly when the aircraft went missing.

Garang, 60, is a charismatic figure whose leadership is seen as key to ensuring the endurance of the peace agreement signed in January. The accord ended 21 years of war by providing for power sharing between the Khartoum government and Garang's southern-based rebels.

It is hoped that his role in the transitional government, which took office in July, could help bring peace to other volatile regions in Sudan, including Darfur.

Ugandan army spokesman 2nd Capt. Dennis Musitwa said Sunday that Garang was on a helicopter that left Uganda on Saturday after he made a private visit to the country.

"They left yesterday in a Ugandan chopper," Musitwa told The Associated Press. "What we know is that the aircraft got weather problems and crash-landed." The discrepancy about the kind of aircraft could not immediately be reconciled.

"We have not established where they landed. They have not reached where they are supposed to reach, and we are trying to locate them," he said.

But any suggestion of a crash had been denied by a spokesman for Garang's political party, Yasir Arman, who said in Nairobi, Kenya, that Garang was "safe and sound" in southern Sudan. Arman declined to give further details Sunday.

Garang, who earned a doctorate from Iowa State University, led the Sudan People's Liberation Army in the war between the Muslim north and mainly Christian and animist south.

The settlement made Garang first vice president as well as president of southern Sudan, letting him set up an interim administration there until a referendum in six years' time on secession.

In its earlier report, Sudanese television said Garang was heading to a former rebel base in southern Sudan when contact was lost with his aircraft.

President Omar el-Bashir clearly saw Garang as an important partner in sealing the peace, ensuring the south does not secede, and in repairing Sudan's international reputation. With a speed stunning to many in Sudan, the Sudanese state media went from describing Garang in the darkest terms to respectively calling him "Dr. Garang" after the peace deal was struck.

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