“There are reports that people are on the streets smashing shop-fronts,” he told reporters in Kampala, citing telephone calls with people in the area. Yugusuk is head of the Anglican Church in southern Sudan’s remote Lomega archdeaconry.

Garang left Uganda by helicopter late on Saturday to return to Sudan after talks with Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni. But Uganda said on Sunday it had lost contact with the aircraft. Various sources in Uganda and Sudan said it appeared the helicopter had run into bad weather, although there was also some speculation it had run out of fuel. A diplomatic source said the wreckage was found in a remote mountainous region of southern Sudan near the border with Uganda. “The wreckage is in southern Sudan. It was found by local people,” the source, who tracks Sudan closely, told Reuters.

Garang was sworn in as first vice president in a landmark ceremony on July 9 and signed with his old enemy President Omar Hassan al-Bashir a new interim constitution.

”My presence here today in Khartoum is a true signal that the war is over,” Garang said when he took his oath of office.

Garang and Bashir had been due to form a new government by Aug. 9. “It’s shocking – the loss of a visionary leader, who really crafted the agreement with (then-first vice president) Ali Osman Taha,” said Lazarus Sumbeiywo, Kenyan chief mediator in the peace talks which resulted in the January peace agreement.

“My prayer is that the Sudanese will remain level-headed.” Garang returned to Khartoum for the first time in two decades on July 8, greeted by more than one million people – so many that some people were crushed and killed in the crowd. Garang was seen as critical to the success of the peace process in the south and many hoped he would work to end Sudan’s conflict in Darfur. His death could deal a blow to the process and for hopes of resolving the conflict in the west.

“What happens next is very, very interesting. In the worst case scenario, it’s a south-south war. In the best case, we will see a democratic overhaul of the SPLM, which many people view currently as something of a dictatorship,” said an experienced foreign Sudan observer well connected with the SPLM. Garang was seen as more savvy than other SPLM leaders, however, he said. “Garang was a much cleverer politician than most of his fellows in the movement.”

An adept politician</B>

  Analysts say Garang has kept control of the estimated 60,000-strong SPLA through a powerful personality and a determination to give southern Sudanese an equal voice in Africa’s largest country. Others say his genial demeanour and academic credentials mask opportunism and ruthless treatment of potential rivals. The peace deal Garang signed gives roughly half Sudan’s oil wealth to the south. It also gives the south the right to secede after the six-year interim period.