The Macedonian president, Boris Trajkovski, who has died in an air crash aged 47, will be most remembered for helping to coax his country back from the brink of civil war in the summer of 2001.
He will also be acknowledged as a modernising politician, whose ambition was to see his former Yugoslav republic ensconced in the European Union; the Macedonian prime minister, Branko Crvenkovski, was in Dublin to oversee the country's formal application to join the EU even as Trajkovski's death was announced.
The centre-right politician was just 43 when he came to power in December 1999, succeeding the immensely popular leader, Kiro Gligorov, who achieved Macedonia's independence from the former Yugoslavia in 1991, without the bloodshed that marked the breakaway of Bosnia and Croatia.
Trajkovski had been president for less than 18 months when long-standing animosity between Macedonia's ethnic Albanians and the majority Slav population came within a whisker of exploding into all-out conflict.
An armed uprising of rebel ethnic Albanians in the north of the republic, near the border with Kosovo, came perilously close to spreading to the capital, Skopje.
Trajkovski reacted by calling on the international community, including NATO, to increase its presence in the country, and by making concessions to the ethnic Albanians, including pledges of an amnesty for guerrillas fighting government forces if they disarmed voluntarily.
He also appealed for greater inclusion of ethnic Albanians in state bodies and institutions. The moves prompted a surge of indignation from the majority Slavic population, and for a while in 2001 Trajkovski came under pressure to resign.
He came to power in what is formally known as the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia ¨- in deference to Greek protests that it owns the rights to the name Macedonia - after elections in November 1999. It was a mere five months after NATO troops had entered neighbouring Kosovo, and ethnic Albanians throughout the region were euphoric that Serb rule there had finally ended. The Kosovo conflict also heartened Albanian guerrilla fighters in Macedonia, who had long dreamed of a "greater Albania", which would include Kosovo and northern swathes of Macedonia.
During the Kosovo crisis Trajkovski accused NATO of paying too little attention to the ethnic tensions brewing in Macedonia, which were fuelled by the influx of more than 300,000 ethnic Albanian refugees from the Serbian province.
Trajkovski and his prime minister at the time, Ljubco Georgievski, both of the Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organisation, were accused by the opposition Social Democratic Alliance of giving in to ethnic Albanian demands to enable them to stay in power.
Trajkovski was born in Strumica, Macedonia. He spoke English and had a law degree from St Cyril and Methodius University in Skopje. He specialised in commercial and employment law and went on to head the legal department of a construction company. He was also ordained as a Methodist preacher after converting from Orthodox Christianity in the United States, where he studied theology.
In 1997 he became chief of the office of the mayor of Kisela Voda municipality in Skopje and in January 1999 was appointed Macedonia's deputy foreign minister.
During his political career he saw huge changes in his country; 10 years ago there were barely any cars on what were then the dusty streets of Skopje. Today vast international hotels line wide, newly-paved boulevards teeming with western shops.
After he won the presidency, European governments saw Trajkovski as the person best able to ensure stability in Macedonia, with a western outlook and a readiness to build contacts with foreign diplomats and politicians. He was on his way to an international funding conference in Bosnia when his plane crashed. He had been expected to win new elections later this year.
He leaves his wife, a son and a daughter.
Boris Trajkovski: born June 25th, 1956; died February 26th, 2004