Respects paid to late prime minister

GEORGIANS yesterday bade farewell to late Prime Minister Zurab Zhvania, who died three days earlier in a friend’s apartment, amid worries for the future of their struggling country and doubts about the official explanation of his death.

Mr Zhvania, 41, was found dead early on Thursday in the apartment of a friend, who also died. Both deaths have officially been attributed to carbon-monoxide poisoning due to faulty ventilation of a gas heater.

Thousands of mourners came to the capital’s Holy Trinity Cathedral and filed past Mr Zhvania’s coffin, which was covered with the Georgian national flag, as priests sang requiem music.

Soldiers carried the coffin to the Didube cemetery, where several thousand people paid their respects as Mr Zhvania was buried alongside other prominent Georgians.

At the cathedral, President Mikhail Saakashvili told mourners that Mr Zhvania had helped defy those who doubted that the former Soviet republic could survive the pressures it faced.