Leaders urge calm after death of Georgian PM
Shaken Georgian leaders have made a plea for calm after Prime Minister Zurab Zhvania was found dead in a friend’s apartment, a blow to President Mikhail Saakashvili’s ambitious pledges to wipe out corruption and resolve two simmering separatist conflicts.
A key ally of Saakashvili and Zhvania, parliament speaker Nino Burdzhanadze, cut short a private visit to Italy and returned to Georgia today, calling for the government not to lose momentum despite “a big loss for Georgian politics and the Georgian state”.
Zhvania, 41, was found dead yesterday at a friend’s home, apparently poisoned by carbon monoxide from a gas-fired heating stove. Initial tests showed Zhvania’s blood had nearly double the fatal level of carbon monoxide, a forensics service spokeswoman said. His host also died.
Authorities called the moderate politician’s death an accident, but many people in Georgia – plagued by a history of political intrigue, conflicts with breakaway regions and tense relations with Russia – were sceptical. One lawmaker linked Zhvania’s death and a car bombing on Tuesday near separatist South Ossetia, and hinted at Russian involvement.
Hundreds of people gathered yesterday outside the home of Zhvania’s mother in central Tbilisi to watch the delivery of a brown wooden coffin. Zhvania’s body will be moved to the capital’s Holy Trinity Cathedral for public viewing tomorrow before Sunday’s funeral.
A visibly shaken Saakashvili lit candles in Zhvania’s honour at the cathedral and urged Georgians to remain calm.
“I assume control over the executive branch and I call on members of the Cabinet to return to work and to continue their work as normal,” said Saakashvili, who appointed Zhvania after his election in January 2004 - rewarding a key ally in the November 2003 protests against election fraud that became known as the “Rose Revolution.”
Zhvania was considered a moderate in the government of the fiery Saakashvili, and he worked to overcome endemic corruption that had enriched some officials during the era of ex-president Eduard Shevardnadze while the economy deteriorated.
Zhvania was found along with his friend Zurab Usupov, a deputy regional governor, in Usupov’s Tbilisi apartment by security guards who broke through a window after hearing nothing from inside the apartment for several hours, Interior Minister Vano Merabishvili said.
Deputy Prosecutor General Georgy Dzhanashia said the gas-fired heater in the apartment was installed “with serious technical violations … there was no ventilation in the apartment.” In his grim-faced announcement of the death, Merabishvili called it an accident.
Many people rely on gas or wood stoves in their homes in Georgia, where central heating is scarce, and fatal leaks and accidents are common.
Zhvania was a key figure in efforts to resolve the conflicts with Abkhazia and South Ossetia, which broke away from the central government after wars in the 1990s. Saakashvili has vowed to reunite his fractured country, but tension is high and erupted into deadly fighting in South Ossetia last summer.
Zhvania was considered a moderate.
“He counterbalanced Saakashvili’s policies,” said Georgy Gelashvili, a former colleague of Zhvania in the Greens party. “I’m afraid that the people close to the president who didn’t much like Zhvania may push (Saakashvili) toward extreme measures in settling conflicts and in the economy.”
A minister in South Ossetia’s separatist government, Boris Chochiyev, said that Zhvania was “among the Georgian politicians who favoured a peaceful settlement of the conflict” and expressed hope that his death would not aggravate tensions.
