UKRAINE: Ukraine's prime minister demands parliamentary and presidential polls to end crisis

Record ID: 212781

  • Title: UKRAINE: Ukraine's prime minister demands parliamentary and presidential polls to end crisis
  • Date: 28th April 2007
  • Summary: VIKTOR YANUKOVICH BLOWS KISSES TO HIS SUPPORTERS CROWD CHANTING NAME OF PRIME MINISTER VIKTOR YANUKOVICH WIDE OF RALLY
  • Embargoed: 13th May 2007 13:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: Ukraine
  • Country: Ukraine
  • Topics: Domestic Politics
  • Reuters ID: LVAE1N43HOL474MYWF0WNKRACGR4
  • Story Text: Ukraine's prime minister says his country could solve its protracted political crisis with simultaneous parliamentary and presidential elections. Ukraine's prime minister on Friday (April 27) said the country could solve its protracted political crisis only if his rival, President Viktor Yushchenko, agreed to hold simultaneous parliamentary and presidential elections.
    Yushchenko, who wants to move Ukraine closer to the West, has long been at odds with Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovich and the majority in parliament backing him.
    The president, who defeated Yanukovich in 2004 after weeks of "Orange Revolution" rallies in his favour, issued a decree this week, the second this month, dissolving parliament. A new parliamentary election was set for June 24.
    Yanukovich told a rally the president was impeding a solution and trying to supplant key institutions.
    "We want the president to rescind all his decrees. And once he has rescinded them let him make an example, and as he has been telling politicians to pass through the purgatory of elections, let him show us to how to do it. And let him say publicly that we are going forward with early presidential and parliamentary elections. That would be honest," Yanukovich told more than 10,000 supporters in Independence Square, focal point of the 2004 upheavals.
    Yanukovich, closer to Moscow in outlook, has opposed the notion of a new election. With parliament's backing, he had pressed for simultaneous parliamentary and presidential polls, but Yushchenko has rejected twin polls.
    Both had, however, called for compromise in weeks of talks.
    Unlike 2004, when the West backed Yushchenko's allegation that he had lost a rigged presidential election, this time the European Union and United States have not taken sides.
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