Officials in the United Nations' Mission in Sudan said earlier Monday that Sudanese First-Vice President John Garang has been killed in a helicopter crash.

But Xinhua has not got any confirmation from the Sudanese government on Garang's death.

The official Omdurman Radio reported that the Sudanese cabinet will hold an emergency meeting at 9:00 am local time to discuss the situations in the country following reports on Garang's missing.

The radio said the Sudanese army and the Ugandan army have launched a massive search on both sides of the borders for Garang's helicopter in the wake of the reported missing. And UN forces in the region have taken part in the search.

Meanwhile, the Sudan People's Liberation Movement, which is chaired by Garang, also announced that it will hold a similar meeting on Monday at the Southern Sudanese town of Rumbek.

The Sudanese government at midnight announced that First-Vice President John Garang was still missing after he took a helicopter to southern Sudan from Uganda.

Government spokesman Abdul-Basit Sabdarat told the state television that Khartoum has mobilized all concerned sectors to investigate the whereabouts of the missing plane.

Garang arrived in Uganda on a chartered flight on Friday for a two-day visit, during which he held talks with Ugandan President Yowery Museveni at his ranch in Rwakitura, about 300 km southwest of Ugandan capital Kampala.

Then he left Uganda for home on Saturday on a Ugandan helicopter and the contact with the plane was lost at 6:30 p.m. (1530 GMT) due to bad weather, it was reported.

Garang was sworn in as the first vice-president on July 9 under a comprehensive peace deal signed with Khartoum in January that ended 21 years of civil war in the country.

The war started in 1983 when the Islamist Sudanese government in Khartoum tried to impose Islamic Sharia law on the mainly Christian and animist south.

(Xinhua News Agency August 1, 2005)