Ukraine's President Meets Premier, Insists On Early Parliamentary Elections

KIEV, Ukraine -- President Viktor Yushchenko told Ukraine's premier on Tuesday that the only way out of the political crisis gripping this ex-Soviet republic was to hold early parliament elections, the president's office said.

Constitutional Court of Ukraine. Five of the 18 judges said Tuesday they would refuse to participate in the hearings, citing pressure on them from the Yanukovych camp.
Yushchenko's latest round of talks with Premier Viktor Yanukovych ended with the president again refusing to back down from his order to dissolve parliament and call new elections.

As they met, some 20,000 of Yanukovych's supporters — waving party flags and holding portraits of the premier — protested in Kiev's Independence Square against the presidential order.

Yanukovych and his parliamentary majority have called the order unconstitutional and refused to obey it. They have appealed to Ukraine's Constitutional Court, which is set to begin hearings Wednesday.

Five of the 18 judges said Tuesday they would refuse to participate in the hearings, citing pressure on them from the Yanukovych camp. The hearings can still go ahead, however, because the court only needs a 12-member quorum.

"The president's decree to dissolve the Ukrainian parliament falls within his constitutional powers," the judges said in a statement. "Unfortunately, some famous officials and politicians publicly say it is unconstitutional, even though under the Constitution, it is only the Constitutional Court that has the right to check its constitutionality."

The standoff has plunged this nation of 47 million into its worst political crisis since the 2004 Orange Revolution. Russia, Ukraine's historic partner, and the West, with whom Ukraine was trying to build closer relations, have both appealed for calm.

Yushchenko told Yanukovych at their meeting Tuesday that a compromise was possible "only under the condition of early parliamentary elections," the presidential office said.

Yushchenko has defended his order to call early elections, saying it was necessary to prevent his Orange Revolution rival from trying to usurp power.

During the bitter 2004 presidential race, Ukraine's Central Election Commission declared Yanukovych the winner. But Yushchenko claimed the election had been stolen and called hundreds of thousands of his supporters to the street.

The mass protests, known as the Orange Revolution, ended after Ukraine's Supreme Court declared the vote riddled with fraud and ordered another poll, which Yushchenko won.

This time, it is Yanukovych who has brought his supporters to the streets. They have set up a tent camp in a central Kiev park, and pledged to increase their numbers to up to 60,000 on Tuesday.

"Yushchenko won't compromise," Transport Minister Mykola Rudkovsky told Yanukovych's supporters, many of whom came to Kiev from Yanukovych's support base in eastern and southern Ukraine. "We must show the president that it is impermissible to ignore half of the country."

Halyna Ozhetrushko, of the eastern city of Dnipropetrovsk, said she was at the rally to make Yushchenko understand that "new elections are a waste of money."

Meanwhile, more than 100 supporters of Yushchenko's Our Ukraine party gathered in nearby European Square to guard a stage that has been erected for their rally in support of the president's dissolution order.

That rally is slated to begin Wednesday.

Source: International Herald Tribune