Ukraine journalist found hanged

Mr Kolomiyets was director of the Ukrainian News agency

The authorities in Ukraine say a journalist who went missing last month has been found hanged in an apartment in Belarus.

The journalist, Mykhailo Kolomiyets, was the director of a financial news agency in the Ukrainian capital, Kiev.

His family said they feared his disappearance might be connected to the agency's independent reporting.

The death of another journalist, Georgiy Gongadze, is still a mystery

A spokesman for the Ukrainian interior ministry said he was certain it was a case of suicide, and that Mr Kolomiyets' death was not linked to his professional activities.

The spokesman, Oleksandr Zarubytskyi, said that forensic experts in Kiev will examine the body.

Mr Kolomiyets went missing on 21 October.

A week later, his colleagues from the news agency Ukrainian News made an appeal to the country's law enforcement agencies.

They asked them to investigate Mr Kolomiyets' disappearance, fearing he had been targeted because of his agency's reporting.

However, Mr Kolomiyets' friend Lyubov Ruban said he called her a week after disappearing and told her he had left the country to commit suicide.

That was his last known phone call.

Disappearance

Mr Kolomiyets, 44, created Ukrainian News in 1997 and owned half its shares.

If the body is confirmed to be that of Mr Kolomiyets, it would be the third death of a prominent journalist in Ukraine in two years.

In 2000, investigative journalist Georgiy Gongadze mysteriously disappeared, and his beheaded body was later found in a forest outside Kiev.

Opposition groups have accused President Leonid Kuchma of being linked to Mr Gongadze's murder.

Mr Kuchma denies any involvement.

Journalists in Ukraine frequently complain of harassment.

Last year, TV company director Ihor Alexandrov was beaten to death in the eastern Donetsk region.