Georgia security chief 'suicide'

Shevardnadze said Sadjaya was the victim of a smear campaign

TBILISI, Georgia -- Georgia's top security official has committed suicide, officials said.

Nugzar Sadjaya, 60, who as secretary of the National Security Council exerted influence over key ministerial promotions, was found in his office with a bullet in the head, an Interior Ministry spokesman told the Associated Press.

He was accused of -- and had denied -- being involved in the high-profile killings of political opponents of President Eduard Shevardnadze.

Sadzhaya had arrived for work as usual on Monday morning and was alone reading newspapers when colleagues heard a shot and rushed in, officials said.

The motive for the apparent suicide was unclear. His supporters, including Shevardnadze, said he was a victim of a smear campaign by his opponents.

Sadzhaya was a close ally of Shevardnadze, serving as a top Communist Party official when Shevardnadze led Soviet Georgia, and serving as independent Georgia's security council secretary since 1995.

Sadjaya deputised for Shevardnadze as chairman of the National Security Council, in his absence.

The president rushed to the hospital in the capital Tbilisi after hearing of Sadzhaya's death, and police cordoned off streets surrounding the hospital and the government building housing Sadzhaya's office.

Last week parliament member Boris Kakubava and a group of refugees from breakaway Abkhazia accused Sadzhaya and the chairman of Georgia's intelligence department of organising the killing of ex-President Zviad Gamsakhurdia and other political leaders, and of plotting the murder of influential regional governor Aslan Abashidze.

Gamsakhurdia, Georgia's first post-Soviet president, was ousted in 1992 and fought a short war in a bid to return to power. He died in mysterious circumstances in 1994, and his followers still staunchly oppose Shevardnadze.

Sadzhaya denied involvement and threatened to sue Kakubava for slander. Kakubava told reporters on Monday that he did not consider himself responsible for Sadzhaya's suicide.

Shevardnadze, speaking to journalists at the hospital, called Sadzhaya's death "a suicide prompted by moral terror."

The incident comes as the impoverished nation in the Caucasus Mountains struggles to curb violence in a region where U.S. and Russian officials say international terrorists have gone to ground.

Moscow and Washington say the Pankisi gorge region, by the mountainous border with Chechnya, has been infiltrated by al Qaeda and Taliban suspects fleeing Afghanistan.

Shevardnadze said on Monday that Georgia was cooperating with the United States and Russia to ease tensions in the gorge, which borders Russia's breakaway Chechnya.