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Speaker of upper parliamentary house to represent Belarus at Niyazov's funeral

Gennady Novitsky, chairman of the upper parliamentary house, the Council of the Republic, will represent Belarus at the funeral of President Saparmurat Niyazov in Turkmenistan, the foreign ministry's spokesman, Andrei Popov, told BelaPAN.

The funeral is to be held on December 24 in the Turkmen leader's hometown of Kipchak, where Niyazov built Central Asia's largest mosque, called "Spirit of Turkmenbashi," at a reported cost of more than $100 million.

On December 21, Aleksandr Lukashenko sent a message of condolences to Ovezgeldy Atayev, chairman of the Turkmen parliament. A few hours later, the message was readdressed to Kurbanguli Berdymukhamedov, a deputy prime minister whom Turkmenistan's State Security Council named the acting president, even though the constitution required Mr. Atayev to take over as acting head of state. The council said that the Prosecutor General's Office has opened a criminal investigation against Mr. Atayev, making him ineligible to fill in as president.

Saparmurat Niyazov is said to have died of heart failure on Thursday morning at the age of 66. He had ruled the country for 21 years since he was appointed as First Secretary of the Turkmen Communist Party in 1985.

He became president of Turkmenistan in 1992 after the country declared its independence on October 27,1991 following the breakup of the Soviet Union.

By 1993, he had assumed the title of Turkmenbashi (the Father of all the Turkmen), and in 1999, the country's docile legislature proclaimed him president for life.