The Ukrainian opposition broke off negotiations with the government on Tuesday night, saying that they preferred ”people power” to further talks, as international pressure grew for fresh elections.
”We are stopping talks with the authorities,” opposition MP Taras Stetskyv told thousands of supporters gathered in central Kiev. ”We will talk with them only from the position of people power.”
United Stated President George Bush urged a return to discussions and called for a peaceful solution to the crisis. ”It’s very important that violence not break out there, and it’s important that the will of the people be heard,” he said.
Tens of thousands of protesters who during the 10-day crisis had filled the streets of Kiev without incident, on Tuesday showed that their patience was wearing thin. A hundred tried to break into Parliament, but were stopped by security guards and calmed by the opposition leader, Viktor Yushchenko.
Oleg Ribachuk, the head of the Yushchenko campaign, said the crowd was not out of control: ”But at the moment they are finding it hard to understand what the hell is going on. The temperature is rising.”
The increasing impatience came as the supreme court deliberated for the second day 7 000 allegations of election fraud made by the opposition against a vote which the prime minister, Viktor Yanukovich, said he won by 3%.
Ukraine’s outgoing president, Leonid Kuchma, on Monday accepted the need for new elections. On Tuesday Yanukovich’s most influential backer, Russia’s president Vladimir Putin, made his first public recognition of the need for repeat elections after a telephone call with Germany’s chancellor, Gerhard Schröder.
Bela Anda, the chancellor’s press secretary, said Putin had said he would respect the results of any repeat vote. The Kremlin reiterated previous signals from Moscow for a legal and ”democratic way” out of the crisis.
Putin and the Polish president, Alexander Kwasniewski, rang Kuchma last night, before the planned arrival of an international delegation today. The EU’s Javier Solana, the Polish and Lith-uanian premiers, and a Kremlin emissary will meet Kuchma on Wednesday.
The threat of Ukraine splitting in two, raised by calls from Yanukovich’s supporters in the east, receded on Tuesday after the eastern Donetsk region said it would not hold its referendum on self-rule as planned on Sunday. The Khar-kiv regional legislature also retracted a threat to introduce self-rule. The governor of Donetsk, Anatoliy Bliznyuk, said his region was seeking ”not autonomy, but to become a republic within Ukraine”. He said the referendum would be held within two months. – Guardian Unlimited Â