TBILISI, Georgia (AP) – A member of the Georgian presidential clemency commission has committed suicide, police said Saturday, two days after the death of Prime Minister Zurab Zhvania. Officials denied any political connection between the victim and the premier.

Georgy Khelashvili, 32, was found dead at his home Friday night of a gunshot wound, said Tbilisi police official Irakli Pirkhalala.

Khelashvili was a member of the presidential commission on pardons. Initial media reports said he also had been a member of Zhvania’s former United Democrats political bloc.

But Karlo Tskhitishvili, head of the parliament’s protocol staff, said Khelashvili did not have any political affiliation with Zhvania, whose United Democrats later merged into the National Movement political bloc. Khelashvili previously had worked for the protocol staff.

Pirkhalala said Khelashvili shot himself with a hunting rifle that he had borrowed from a neighbor on the pretext of taking a hunting trip. He left a note asking for forgiveness, Pirkhalala said, but did not give further details of the note’s contents.

Officials confirmed Friday that Zhvania died of carbon-monoxide poisoning, apparently as a result of an improperly ventilated space heater at the apartment of friend, who also died.

Georgians, meanwhile, continued to grapple with Zhvania’s sudden death and its implications for the country’s reform efforts.

The 41-year-old Zhvania was a key figure in attempts to lift the country out of its post-Soviet economic collapse and political turmoil. He was also one of the leaders of the 2003 “Rose Revolution” protests that propelled President Mikhail Saakashvili to power and brought down his predecessor, Eduard Shevardnadze.

Zhvania earned deep respect and affection and was seen as a moderating balance to the sometimes-incendiary boldness of Saakashvili, who was elected president in 2004.

“After the Rose Revolution, when the country was in complete collapse, he was able to get us out of economic difficulties. Teachers started getting paid on time, pensioners got their pensions,” said mourner Ksenia Kuparadze, a 70-year-old pensioner outside the apartment of Zhvania’s grieving mother, where the body was brought late Thursday.

Zhvania’s body was scheduled to be moved from his mother’s home later Saturday to Tbilisi’s Holy Trinity Cathedral, where a funeral will be held Sunday.

Among the dignitaries traveling to Georgia for the funeral is Sen. Richard Lugar, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, who was designated by President Bush to head the U.S. delegation.

Authorities have called Zhvania’s death an accident, another of the many carbon-monoxide poisonings that have troubled the capital since its central-heating system went out of service in 1992. Many residents have turned to wood and gas stoves to keep warm.

Even before the suicide of Khelashvili, many Georgians wondered whether authorities were telling the truth about Zhvania’s death. Georgia has a history of political intrigue and violence,

“There were plenty of people who envied Zurab, many were hoping that a conflict would break out between him and the president,” said historian Grigory Dardzhanian.

AP-ES-02-05-05 0817EST

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