Aide to dead Georgian PM commits suicide: official

Agence France Presse
02/04/2005

TBILISI, Feb 4 (AFP) – An aide to Georgian prime minister Zurab Zhvania,
who died apparently after breathing toxic fumes leaked by a faulty
heater, committed suicide late Friday, an interior ministry spokesman said.

The aide, 32-year-old Georgi Khelashvili, shot himself with a gun in his
Tbilisi apartment, the spokesman said.

Khelashvili was a member of Zhavania’s staff, working with the pardons
commission, the Mze television channel reported.

It was not yet clear whether Khelashvili’s suicide was linked to
Zhvania`s death.

Zhvania, Georgia’s widely respected prime minister seen as the driving
force behind market-oriented economic reform in the restive Caucasus
republic, died early Thursday.

The 41-year-old prime minister was found by his bodyguards slumped over
a table in an apartment on the outskirts of Tbilisi, and appeared to
have succumbed to inadequately ventilated carbon monoxide fumes from a
heater.

The body of another local Georgian official, Raul Yusupov, was found
dead on the floor in another room in the apartment. There were no signs
of foul play, and officials quickly quashed suspicions that the deaths
could have been anything but accidental.

News of Zhvania`s death sent shock waves through Georgia and President
Mikhail Saakashvili, acting in line with the constitution, dismissed the
entire Zhvania government, though its members were to remain in place on
what is technically an interim basis pending confirmation of a new
government.

Saakashvili announced that he would take over Zhvania`s duties until a
new government was installed. He was expected to name a new prime
minister before February 10

Zhvania was a father of three, who entered political life as an ally of
veteran Georgian president Eduard Shevardnadze but later switched his
allegiance to Saakashvili, becoming himself a leading figure in the 2003
“rose revolution” that ousted Shevardnadze and swept the US-educated
Saakashvili to power.

His appointment last year as prime minister was a power-sharing
arrangement that placed chief responsibility for introducing sweeping
economic reforms in Georgia with the prime minister. Analysts said the
reform process would be slowed as a result of Zhvania`s death.