JOHN Garang, who led Sudanese rebels for 21 years in a war against the Khartoum government, died in an air crash only weeks after being sworn in as the country's deputy leader in a power-sharing agreement that raised hopes of bringing a lasting peace.

The charismatic Garang was seen as key to bringing southerners - a population of Christians and animists - into a government dominated by northern Muslims. Southerners are to be given a chance to vote on secession in six years.

President Omar el-Bashirwants to keep Sudan unified and no doubt hoped Garang, who has said secession was never his goal, would be an ally in that campaign. Garang, who survived numerous assassination attempts and several violent splits in his rebel movement, died as he returned aboard a Ugandan presidential aircraft from a private trip to Uganda.

Uganda had supported Garang during the war but recently pledged to repair its relationship with Khartoum.

The peace deal promises the south a share of power, a say in their region's resources and a promise of democratic elections. No other figures in the south have Garang's influence to bring to the table as north and south work out a powersharing government and try to establish rebel fighters as a force alongside the Sudanese military.

Over more than two decades, he dominated the scene in the south, using what critics and admirers alike called his ability "to juggle a stone and an egg".

He held together his often fractious Sudan People's Liberation Army through force of personality and wheeling and dealing among the south's multiple tribes. His critics accused him of wielding dictatorial control over the rebel movement.

Garang insisted that his goal was not to break the south away from Sudan, but to create a secular state where southerners' rights were respected. Successive Khartoum governments sought to impose Islamic law in Sudan.

A Dinka tribesman from a small southern village, he mixed easily with his fighters, joking with them in crowds in the remote villages of his homelands. Educated in the US, he consulted with politicians, economists and development experts in capitals around the globe. Garang has a doctorate in economics.

Sudan's peace agreement, sealed in January, gave Garang the second most powerful position in the government. When he came to Khartoum to claim it last month - setting foot in the capital for the first time in 22 years - he was welcomed by crowds of southerners and northerners, celebrating his presence as a sign that the peace was real. He was sworn in as first vice president on July 9. The settlement made Garang president of southern Sudan, letting him set up an interim administration there until a referendum in six years' time on secession.

The civil war, which began in 1983, left two million people dead from fighting, famine and disease.

Garang kept the bulk of the SPLA behind him, in part by recruiting representatives of every tribe in the south - and even many from the north.

John Garang de Mabior was born in June, 1945, into the Dinka Nilotic tribe in the village of Buk, in Bor County. Education was an immediate priority, and he attended Bussere Intermediate School in nearby Wau.

"It was my only chance;

no-one in my village could even read, " he told Sudanese national TV in January. At 18, he left high school to join the first southern rebellion in 1963. But he said guerrilla leaders urged him to finish school, which he eventually did in Tanzania.

He later attended Grinnell College in Iowa, graduating in 1969 with a BA in economics, after which he returned to Africa with a fellowship to study at Dar es Salaam University, Tanzania - then a hot bed of radical thinking. There he met Yoweri Museveni, who would later lead a rebellion in Uganda from 1981-1986 and become a key ally. Museveni is now Uganda's president.

Garang returned to southern Sudan in 1970 and was integrated into the government army two years later when a peace deal was reached. During the next 11 years, Garang attended the US Army infantry officer's course at Fort Benning, Georgia and earned his doctorate at Iowa State University.

But some southerners, including Garang, felt the peace was doomed and formed a covert group to organise another rebellion.

In May 1983, then Col Garang was visiting troops in the south when the army attacked a battalion he had once commanded. Suddenly the second warwas underway, months earlier than the rebels intended, he said. As the most senior officer, Garang assumed leadership.

"My background in the military is by force of circumstance, " said the articulate rebel leader who read war classics, from Sun Tzu to George Patton.

Garang, who was secretive about his private life, was married to Rebecca de Mabior, a leader in his Sudan People's Liberation Movement, which had been the rebels' political wing. There are five children.