FBI to investigate Ukraine murder

KIEV, Ukraine -- Friends of a missing reporter have dismissed as blatant propaganda a decision by Ukraine to call in the FBI to investigate the case.

President Leonid Kuchma has been under pressure to resign since a mutilated corpse was found near Kiev in November and the publication of tapes in which a voice like Kuchma's says he wants rid of journalist Heorhiy Gongadze.

The president denies involvement in Gongadze's disappearance and refuses to quit. He accuses thousands of demonstrators who have marched in Kiev and other cities of threatening national security.

The apparent murder of Gongadze, a harsh critic of Kuchma, has sparked Ukraine's biggest political scandal in a decade, and raised concern about press freedom in the former Soviet state.

Kuchma's acceptance of help from the FBI came after visiting U.S. congressmen pressed him to make use of a law enforcement cooperation agreement during two hours of talks on Thursday.

"President Leonid Kuchma has called on the prosecutor general to work with Federal Bureau of Investigation experts who should use their expertise to identify the corpse," the president's office said in a statement.

Previous DNA tests show the decapitated corpse has a 99.6 percent probability of being Gongadze, but prosecutors have consistently declined to declare the reporter dead, which would spark a formal murder investigation.

Gongadze's mother, Lesya, has waged a campaign to find out what happened to her son and accused Prosecutor General Mykhailo Potebenko of criminal negligence in the case.

In an open letter, she said Potebenko should be prosecuted for ignoring a letter her son wrote in July, complaining of being tailed by unknown people and asking for protection.

Local media quoted Gongadze at the time as saying the licence plates of cars following him belonged to the Interior Ministry, although officials later said the plates were stolen.

"There is no longer any doubt my son was killed," she said.

The news Web site Gongadze set up and edited (www.pravda.com.ua) dismissed Kuchma's announcement as a public relations exercise following Western criticism of the case.

"The essence of the invitation to FBI experts is blatant propaganda," said the Web site, which has rocketed from obscurity to being Ukraine's most-read site since the scandal broke. "The FBI is to use expertise which nobody needs, except Kuchma."

Reuters contributed to this report.

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