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I think it's too soon to called it a poisoning.... But anyway, maybe it will help us in our task to keep Serb from going away!
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Doctors suspect former Russian prime minister poisoned
November 30, 2006 - 3:13PM
Doctors treating former Russian prime minister Yegor Gaidar in a Moscow hospital have said he was probably poisoned, a Russian newspaper reported today, amid speculation that the case might be linked to the deaths of a Russian ex-spy and a top journalist.
"The doctors are leaning towards the conclusion that all the symptoms ... point specifically to poisoning," Gaidar's daughter Maria told the Kommersant newspaper.
The doctors will make their final diagnosis tomorrow, with "a poison unknown to civilian medicine" the most likely cause of his illness, she said.
Mr Gaidar was in satisfactory condition late yesterday but "there was a serious threat to his life" after he fell ill on November 24 in Ireland, where he had been attending a conference, his daughter said on NTV television.
His illness came one day after the death in London of former Russian secret services agent Alexander Litvinenko, who was poisoned by a rare radioactive substance in an incident that Litvinenko himself blamed on President Vladimir Putin. The Kremlin has rejected the charges.
Mr Putin telephoned Mr Gaidar to wish him a quick recovery, London's Financial Times reported today, citing the Kremlin.
Anatoly Chubais, the influential head of Russia's state electricity company and a longtime associate of Mr Gaidar, connected the former prime minister's illness with Litvinenko's death and the recent murder of journalist Anna Politkovskaya, suggesting the Kremlin's enemies were behind all three.
"This deadly design would have been extremely attractive for those supporting unconstitutional, violent means of changing power in Russia," Mr Chubais said.
Ultra-nationalist parliament deputy Vladimir Zhirinovsky blamed Mr Gaidar's condition on foreign powers attempting "to destabilise the situation or create an atmosphere of suspicion" in the run-up to Russia's 2007 parliamentary elections, RIA Novosti reported.
Mr Gaidar fell ill after eating breakfast where he was staying outside Dublin, he told the Financial Times.
The former prime minister managed to answer questions about his book, The Death of the Empire: Lessons for Contemporary Russia, in an appearance at the National University of Ireland, Maynooth, before he had to be hospitalised.
He was transferred to a Moscow hospital on Sunday.
"We are concerned by the very fact of the poisoning and would not like to make premature conclusions," said opposition politician Leonid Gozman, one of the leaders of the liberal Union of Right Forces Party, of which Mr Gaidar was a co-founder.
As Russia's first post-Soviet prime minister, Gaidar was a chief architect of reforms known as "shock therapy", which helped transform the communist economy but which are widely blamed in Russia for capital flight and a 1998 economic collapse.
Utilities chief Mr Chubais, who also helped organise the reforms, survived an assassination attempt in 2005.
Mr Gaidar now heads an economic think tank in Moscow that frequently criticises Mr Putin's policy of increasing state control over the economy.
AFP
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