Gorbachev launches new book by slain Putin critic

MOSCOW, May 31 (Reuters) Former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev hosted the launch of a new book by murdered Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya, the first by her to be widely available in her native land and language.

Politkovskaya, a critic of President Vladimir Putin and reporter of human rights abuses in Chechnya, was shot dead last October at the entrance to her central Moscow apartment block as she returned from a Saturday afternoon shopping trip.

Investigators say her unsolved murder was linked to her reporting.

Gorbachev, 76, hosted the launch at his political institute in Moscow alongside Politkovskaya's son, daughter and estranged husband, who edited the book.

''Anna may have died, but she is still with us and it (the book) is very important because we need to know more about people like her, especially in a country which is still trying to find its way,'' Gorbachev told the press briefing.

Politkovskaya's death sparked outrage in the West but little emotion in Russia, where previous books by her were never properly published. Her reports appeared only in the fringe intellectual newspaper 'Novaya Gazeta', part owned by Gorbachev.

''It's very important that this work is in Russian,'' Politkovskaya's 28-year-old son Ilya said.

''My mother's only book in Russian was in 2002 and was called 'The Second Chechen War'. But there were problems printing it and distributing it.'' The 988-page hardback book, entitled ''What for'' and priced at around 600 roubles, arranges work by Politkovskaya around different themes.

Yesterday the prominence given to Politkovskaya's book at shops in Moscow varied.

At the Moscow Bookstore near Red Square, one of the Russian capital's most famous and mainstream bookshops, about six copies of Politkovskaya's book had been jammed into the political memoirs section.

Further along the same shopping street, at an alternative bookshop, Politkovaskaya's face stared out at passers-by from the large window display for the new book.

Friends and collagues at the launch criticised the slow pace of the investigation into her death.

''It's essential that the investigation is brought to a swift conclusion, the killers are found, they are prosecuted and justice is delivered,'' said Aidan White, General-Secretary of the worldwide journalists' union the International Federation of Journalists, to applause from Gorbachev and others.

White was in Moscow to attend a conference which called on governments to do more to catch reporters' killers.

In the background a projector displayed a series of black and white photos spanning Politkovskaya's life. The last showed the thin, tall 48-year-old striding into a supermarket hours before she was shot dead.

REUTERS SY PM0905