KIEV, Dec 1: Candidates in Ukraine's disputed presidential election failed to resolve their dispute on Wednesday in negotiations with international mediators, agreeing to fresh talks only after a ruling by the Supreme Court.
In Donetsk, the heart of the Donbass region where metallurgy and coal mining are the largest employers, the local parliament voted to hold a referendum on Jan 9 on changing Ukraine's constitution to give regions more powers.
Outgoing President Leonid Kuchma, speaking to reporters after two hours of talks, said Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovich and opposition candidate Viktor Yushchenko had agreed that opposition protesters should no longer block government offices.
They also agreed to take steps to limit damage to Ukraine's economy, hit by a week of mass protests. But no fresh talks would take place, Mr Kuchma said, until the Supreme Court issued a ruling on Mr Yushchenko's complaint that the official count declaring Mr Yanukovich the winner in the Nov 21 election was subject to mass fraud.
Mr Kuchma said all parties had also agreed in the talks - attended by mediators from the European Union, Russia, Poland and Lithuania - to pursue long-term changes on reducing the powers of the president.
Mr Yanukovich said nothing to reporters after the end of the talks. He was dismissed as prime minister by parliament on Wednesday but rejected the assembly's move as illegal and also denounced its symbolic decision last Saturday declaring the presidential election as invalid. But Yushchenko, speaking after the talks, said the accord signed at the end of the talks amounted to an acknowledgement by his rival that he would have to quit as premier.
"He does not recognize today's decision or Saturday's, but he still signed the agreement today," Yushchenko said. "This is a compromise by reasonable people. I think both sides are a little disappointed but we made a little progress."
EAST WANTS SELF-RULE: Ukraine's pro-Russian eastern regions scrambled for a measure of self-rule on Wednesday amid warnings that the prospect of new presidential elections threatened to put the "wrong" candidate in power.
This Russian-speaking region is the home-turf of Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovich, an industrial boss who served as governor here. Local rulers now see holding a referendum on changing Ukraine into a federation as the only way to secure more self-rule in the face of a candidate partial to western Ukraine coming to power and have scheduled it for Jan 9.
"We don't see any other way to make sure funds stay at the local level," said chairman of the Donetsk region's parliament, Boris Kolesnikov. The opposition candidate, Viktor Yushchenko, is the western world's darling, with an American wife and liberal ideas, and many in Ukraine and abroad hope he will be able to dismantle Ukraine's clan-like business structures that Mr Yanukovich is said to represent. But not in Donetsk where many still remember a time when Mr Yushchenko was prime minister and mines in this region began to shut as state subsidies for the industry, which employs 200,000 people in eastern Ukraine, dried up.
"Yushchenko is the wrong man for us," said Genady Mendeleyev, a coal miner for 10 years in the Trudovskaya mine just outside Donetsk. "He calls us imbeciles, he doesn't respect the people." -Reuters/AFP
