In this paper, we obtain a general Ekeland's variational principle for set-valued mappings in complete metric space, which is different from those in [G.Y. Chen, X.X. Huang, Ekeland's epsilon-variational principle for set-valued mapping, Mathematical Methods of Operations Research 48 (1998) 181-186; G.Y. Chen, X.X. Huang, S.H. Hou, General Ekeland's Variational Principle for Set-Valued Mappings, journal of Optimization Theory and Applications 106 (2000) 151-164; S.J. Li, W.Y. Zhang, On Ekeland's variational Principle for set-valued mappings, Acta Mathematicae Application Sinica, English Series 23 (2007) 141-148]. By the result, we prove some existence results for a general vector equilibrium problem under nonconvex and compact or noncompact assumptions of its domain, respectively. Moreover, we give some equivalent results to the variational principle. (C) 2008 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.