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.
02/04/2005 21:32 GMT - AFP