Saparmurat Niyazov, the president for life and supreme dictator of Turkmenistan, is dead.

According to Xinhua, Hu Jintao sent a message to acting President Gurbanguly Berdymukhamedov.

Hu's message, on behalf of the Chinese government and people, expressed "deep-felt" condolences on the death of Turkmenistan's President Niyazov and "sincere" sympathies to the government and people of Turkmenistan and the president's family.

Xinhua also reports that "U.S. President George W. Bush expressed his sadness" over Niyazov's death.

The Finanicial Times looks at the possible fallout from the dictator's death:

The sudden death on Thursday of Saparmurat Niyazov, Turkmenistan’s autocratic and eccentric president, has raised the threat of instability in a Central Asian republic that is an important energy supplier to Europe....

...His death is expected to spark both an internal power struggle and a tussle for influence between Russia, China and the US over a country with the world’s fifth-largest gas reserves.

There is a Wikipedia entry on Niyazov here (here if you're in China). Excerpt:

Niyazov was an authoritarian leader and was notorious in Western countries for the personality cult that he established around himself in Turkmenistan. Claiming Turkmenistan to be a nation devoid of a national identity, he attempted to rebuild the country to his own vision. He renamed the town of Krasnovodsk, on the Caspian Sea, Türkmenbaşy after himself, in addition to renaming several schools, airports and even a meteorite after himself and his immediate family. He even named the months, and days of the week after himself and his family; January becoming Turkmenbashi.

Niyazov's face appears on Manat banknotes and large portraits of the president hang all over the country, especially on major public buildings and avenues. Statues of himself and his mother are scattered all over Turkmenistan, including one in the middle of the Karakum Desert as well as a gold-plated statue atop Aşgabat's largest building, the Neutrality Arch, that rotates so it will always face into the sun and shine light onto the capital city. Niyazov commissioned a massive palace in Aşgabat commemorating his rule. He was given the hero of Turkmenistan award five times. "I'm personally against seeing my pictures and statues in the streets — but it's what the people want," Niyazov said.

The education system indoctrinated young Turkmen to love Niyazov, with his works and speeches making up most of their textbooks' content. The primary text was a national epic written by Niyazov, the Ruhnama or Book of the Soul. This book, a mixture of revisionist history and moral guidelines, was intended as the "spiritual guidance of the nation" and the basis of the nation's arts and literature. With Soviet-era textbooks banned without being replaced by new publications, libraries are left with little more than Niyazov's works.