YALTA: In the city where Stalin, Roosevelt and Churchill met to draw up a plan that would split up Europe and the world for the next four and half decades, citizens hope an election that has divided their country won't break it in half.

Ukraine's five-week election saga has roiled this ex-Soviet nation - pitting the more nationalist western half and the Russian-speaking south and east against each other - and in a Cold War flashback raised tension between Russia and the West.

To the chagrin of many in Yalta - where the leaders of the USSR, United States and Britain met to carve Europe into spheres of influence setting the stage for the start of the Cold War - the West's favourite for president won: Viktor Yushchenko.

In Crimea more than four out of five voters supported the Russia-backed Viktor Yanukovich in the December 26 election, as compared to country overall where Yushchenko won by 52 to 44 percent.

People here are doubly unhappy with the election because the Supreme Court annulled a previous round which Yanukovich won after the opposition charged there was massive fraud and organized weeks-long street protests and shut down the government.

Now Yaltans feel they got the short end of the stick and fear reprisals from Yushchenko who has promised to clean up Ukraine's clan-like business environment and root out corruption on all levels.

"If the reprisals start the country will break apart immediately," said 69-year-old Anatoly, a civil servant in the Crimean regional government on a stroll through a park near the palace where the Yalta Summit was held in 1944.

A souvenir vendor nearby said local officials who had switched to support Yushchenko after they realized he would win were now making threats against people they knew voted for Yanukovich.

"They said they wouldn't let us work here any more, they've already started discriminating against Yanukovich supporters," said Maria who asked that her last name not be printed.

Pro-Russian feelings are very strong in the Crimean peninsula which was a part of the Russian Federation until 1954. Most of its population considers itself to be Russian and the region has hosted Russia's Black Sea fleet since its inception in the late 1700s.

In Soviet times the city was considered to be the foremost vacation and health resort in the country and only Moscow's creme de la creme would visit it every summer. Earlier in the election the threat of Ukraine breaking into two pieces, one that would integrate with Russia and one that would strive to join the west, seemed real.

When Yushchenko's protests in Kiev were strongest, Yanukovich hosted an emotional summit of leaders from Russian speaking areas in his home region Donetsk where participants said they were ready to split off.

At a similar meeting a week later in Kharkiv, Crimea's top officials sat in the front row as delegates spoke of a plan to federalize Ukraine so the Russian-speaking regions could get more independence from Kiev.

"The Russian language was the basis of the split," Anatoly said, adding that the situation in Crimea was especially tense because of a Muslim minority of Crimean Tatars who supported Yushchenko.

"If anything happened, if there was blood, everything would be finished," he said. Yushchenko himself has downplayed the split saying in televised remarks that close elections happen all over the world and this election has left "no scar on society's body."

Not all Russian speakers in Yalta supported Yanukovich however. On a concrete jetty bristling with fishing rods in Yalta's harbour, a fisherman said he had hopes that a Yushchenko government would clean up the country. -AFP