Ugandan and Sudanese forces are still searching for the missing helicopter carrying Sudan's vice president and ex-rebel leader John Garang. The helicopter was flying to Southern Sudan from Uganda when it disappeared in bad weather Saturday.

John Garang

Early Monday morning, Sudan's Information Minister said Vice President John Garang's aircraft was still missing, contradicting earlier television reports that it had landed safely.

Abdel-Basit Sabderat said on state television that there is no new information about Mr. Garang's whereabouts.

Mr. Sabderat said the aircraft took off Saturday from Uganda bound for southern Sudan. Ugandan air traffic controllers said they lost contact and the Ugandan military began a search.

Vice President Garang had been in Kampala visiting Ugandan president Yoweri Museveni.

Sudanese President Omar el Bashir (r) holds hands with former leader of the Sudan People's Liberation Army John Garang

Mr. Garang became Sudan's first Vice President three weeks ago as part of a peace deal signed earlier this year. The deal ended a 21-year civil war between the government and rebels in the south.

He was a Captain in the regular Sudanese army in 1972. He traveled to the United States to study at Grinnell College, Iowa. He also received military training at Fort Benning, Georgia.

When he returned to Sudan in 1981 with a PhD in Agricultural Economics from the United States, former Sudanese president Jaafar Numeiri promoted him to Colonel. He tought at the Khartoum Military Academy.

In 1983, Mr. Numeiri sent Colonel Garang to quell a mutiny of 500 southern soldiers who resisted Khartoum's orders, but he joined the rebellion. A few weeks later, he established the Sudan's People's Liberation Army (SPLA), an armed rebel group that sought autonomy for the mainly Christian-and-pagan south from the majority Muslim north. Garang's rebellion sparked Sudan's civil war which claimed more than two million lives and displaced millions more.

A split occurred within the SPLA between 1989 and 1995, but the movement gained momentum when Washington accused Khartoum of sponsoring terrorism.

John Garang was born in 1945 into a Christian family in Nilotic-speaking Dinka tribe which settles in the Bahr El Ghazal and Upper Nile provinces in southern Sudan.