AGANA, Guam -- The president of the mid-Pacific island Republic of Palau, Lazarus Salii, was shot in the head and killed Saturday in what U.S. officials said was an 'apparent suicide.'
Reached by telephone from Guam, the chief of police of the Palau capital of Koror said Salii was shot once in the head around 5 p.m. in the living room of his home and that no arrests had been made.
Salii, the second chief executive of Palau to die of gunshot wounds in three years, was immediately replaced by Vice President Thomas Ramengesall, who declared a state of emergency, said Palauans in Guam. Palau is about 800 miles southwest of the U.S. Pacific commonwealth of Guam,
The Koror police chief, who did not give his name, said the circumstances of Salii's death were not known. He said it was not immediately clear whether the fatal shot was fired from inside or outside Salii's house.
But U.S. Defense Department spokesman Michael Stepp said in Washington a message to the Pentagon from the U.S. mission in Palau confirmed that the president had been shot in the head and called his death an 'apparent suicide.'
The police chief said Salii's wife and a security officer assigned to the family were in the yard behind the house when a shot rang out.
Salii was rushed to the hospiatal where he died 'several hours later,' the police chief said.
Palauan residents on Guam who spoke to relatives by telephone initially said Salii's death was an assassination.
Palau's first president, Haruro Remelick, was assassinated in 1985. The investigation of his death is continuing, although arrests were made in the case and three suspects taken to court and convicted.
Subsequent court action has clouded the case and the suspects were freed after at least two witnesses to the killing recanted thieir testimony after the convictions.
Salii was considered the architect of the draft for Palau's compact of free association with the United States after the U.N. trusteeship over Palau and other Pacific islands occupied by Japan in World War II was terminated.
Salii was chosen as Palau's president in November 1985 in a special election following the slaying of Remelick.
Elections are scheduled for Palau in November and campaigning has been heavy and bitter in the young island republic, sometimes bordering on personal attacks.
Political infighting and disagreement over a proposed ban on nuclear-armed vessels entering Palauan waters has delayed Palau's final independence from the U.S.-administered trusteeship of the islands known as Micronesia.
The other Micronesian island groups -- the Northern Marianas, the Marshalls, Yap, Ponape, Truk and Kosrea -- achieved full independence in 1986.
The United States administered Micronesia -- formally known as the Trust Territory of the Pacific Islands -- from 1947 under the auspices of the United Nations.
