Mongolian Prime Minister Sanjaa Bayar tendered his resignation Monday due to health reasons, a government spokeswoman said, creating new political uncertainty in the poor but resource-rich Asian nation. "Today the prime minister has handed in his resignation," the spokeswoman, who would not give her name, told AFP by telephone from the Mongolian capital Ulan Bator.
"He could not perform his duties" due to health concerns, she said, declining to provide further details about his condition. Bayar was hospitalised in Ulan Bator last week for liver problems, China's official Xinhua news agency reported. He reportedly had previously sought treatment in South Korea. Parliament had yet to approve Bayar's resignation, another government official said.
Bayar's Mongolian People's Revolutionary Party (MPRP) controls parliament, but Tsakhiagiin Elbegdorj of the opposition Democratic Party won the presidency in May, creating a virtual coalition government. In July 2008, five people were killed when thousands rioted in Ulan Bator, one month after a disputed parliamentary election victory by the MPRP, which ruled the country in Stalinist fashion when it was a Soviet satellite.
At the time, Bayar accused then opposition leader Elbegdorj of triggering the riots by alleging vote-rigging. Bayar ended a two-month parliamentary boycott by the Democrats by agreeing to allow some Democrats into his cabinet, and was finally sworn in as prime minister in September 2008. At the time, he was widely seen as an economic reformer, and was expected to help push through lucrative mining contracts needed to boost the economy of the landlocked country, which is wedged between China and Russia.
Mongolia has struggled to develop a sustainable economy since turning to capitalism two decades ago. But its rich deposits of copper, gold, uranium, silver and even oil have caught the eye of foreign investors. Just three weeks ago, the government sealed a long-awaited multi-billion-dollar deal with Canada's Ivanhoe Mines and Anglo-Australian miner Rio Tinto to develop one of the world's richest copper deposits.
The Oyu Tolgoi mine in the south Gobi desert will employ thousands of workers, with thousands more finding jobs along the supply chain. Next in the pipeline is Tavan Tolgoi, which is said to be the largest untapped coal field in the world. Mongolia shook off communist rule in 1990 without a shot being fired, and the first democratic elections were held in 1992.