07 January 2005	Friday	25 Ziqa'ad 1425

KIEV, Jan 6: Ukraine's supreme court threw out on Thursday a challenge to last month's presidential election, paving the way for liberal Viktor Yushchenko to take power next week after two weeks in political limbo.

The court rejected an appeal by former Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovich, who lost to Yushchenko in the Dec. 26 vote but tried to force the Central Election Commission to reconsider complaints it already threw out last week.

"The Court has decided to deny the complaint by presidential candidate Viktor Yanukovich. This decision is final and cannot be challenged," a Supreme Court justice said, reading out the decision after several hours of deliberations.

The election commission said it would resume work on Sunday, after remaining closed on Friday for Ukraine's Christmas holiday. The commission must certify and publish the final results before Yushchenko can be declared the winner.

Yushchenko had accused Yanukovich of using his challenges to "torture the nation". Yushchenko's followers suspected allies of outgoing President Leonid Kuchma of dragging out the transition to win time to cover the tracks of shady deals.

Yanukovich could mount another appeal after the commission announces its result. But the court's decisive ruling makes it unlikely he could hold up the process much longer.

"The odds are there will be more appeals to the Supreme Court. But it's unlikely they would even be accepted for consideration," Yushchenko's representative at the hearing, Svitlana Kustova, said after the judgment.

Yanukovich had long said he had little hope of success. "This is exactly the decision we expected. For a long time the court has been making political rather than legal rulings," his lawyer, Svitlana Shapiro, said.

DECISIVE ROLE: The same court played a decisive role in bringing Yushchenko to power by throwing out the result of a rigged November election after Yanukovich was declared the winner.

Yushchenko's supporters, who demonstrated in their hundreds of thousands against the rigged poll in November, have maintained a tent city on the streets of the capital Kiev to keep up pressure during the drawn-out transition.

In the days after the Dec. 26 election, one member of the outgoing cabinet was found dead in his sauna with a gunshot to the head, other officials were sacked by Kuchma and some are rumoured to have left the country. -Reuters