Yuri Kravchenko, then Ukraine's Interior Minister, is seen in his office in Kiev in this 2000 file photo. Ex-Minister Kravchenko was found dead at his country house outside Kiev Friday, March 4, 2005, officials said. Kravchenko has been accused by the opposition of being involved in the killing of opposition journalist Heorhiy Gongadze five years ago. (Photo: AP/Yahoo)

Yuri Kravchenko, then Ukraine's Interior Minister, is seen in his office in Kiev in this 2000 file photo.  He was found dead at his country home early Friday, hours before he is to testify in a murder case of an opposition journalist. (Photo: AP/Yahoo)

    KIEV, March 4 (Xinhuanet) -- Former Ukrainian Interior Minister Yury Kravchenko was found dead at his country home early Friday, hours before he is to testify in a murder case of an opposition journalist.

    A preliminary report suggested Kravchenko committed suicide in his house in the Koncha-Zaspe elite cottage village, Interfax-Ukraine news agency cited law enforcement sources as saying.

    Interior Ministry press secretary Inna Kisel also echoed the statement by saying later that Kravchenko is believed to have committed suicide.

    Kravchenko was expected to go to the Prosecutor General's Office on Friday morning for questioning related to the investigation of the 2000 murder of journalist Georgy Gongadze.

    On a recording said to have been made by a former bodyguard of ex-president Leonid Kuchma, Kravchenko allegedly can be heard making comments on Gongadze's disappearance in September 2000. Kravchenko served as interior minister at the time of Gongadze's disappearance.

    Ukraine's Segodnya newspaper earlier reported that Kravchenko had been under official surveillance since December 2004, being banned from leaving Ukraine.

    Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko said Tuesday the murder case had been solved and security forces had detained the killers.He said the former authorities not only lacked the political will to solve the murder, but covered up for the murderers.

    Ukraine's Prosecutor General Svyatoslav Piskun said Wednesday the suspected killers included two colonels and a police officer: two of them are in custody and another is under orders not to leave Kiev. The fourth suspect is a former senior police official,who is wanted on an international warrant.

    But Piskun refused to name the suspected mastermind behind the slaying, whom he said had been identified.

    Gongadze, an Internet journalist who wrote about high-level corruption, was abducted in downtown Kiev in September 2000, and his decapitated body was found months later buried in a forest outside the capital.

    His death sparked months of protests against former President Leonid Kuchma, who the opposition alleged was involved in the killing. Kuchma repeatedly denied the allegations and said the tape recording was forged.

    Yushchenko, who was sworn in in January, had pledged to solve the case, calling it his government's moral duty. Enditem