UKRAINE: President Viktor Yushchenko demanded yesterday that Ukraine's parliament reverse its decision to sack the government, insisting that his ministers would remain in office until an election on March 26th which his opponents are well-placed to win.
An unlikely coalition of pro-western reformers and allies of Moscow voted down the government this week for agreeing to pay more for Russian gas in a move that was widely construed as a way to undermine Mr Yushchenko before the election.
"I signed an appeal to parliament with a demand to cancel the unconstitutional decision to sack the government," Mr Yushchenko told a cabinet meeting.
Bracketing Yulia Tymoshenko, his key ally in the 2004 Orange Revolution, with Viktor Yanukovich, his main adversary in that struggle, Mr Yushchenko denounced his opponents' "betrayal of the political and moral interests of the nation".
It was with similar language that parliament voted to sack the government for agreeing to pay almost double the current rate for Russian gas in a murky deal which analysts fear may leave energy supplies hostage to political forces in Moscow.
An angry Mr Yushchenko also pulled out of a controversial pact with Mr Yanukovich not to prosecute some officials with alleged responsibility for the electoral vote-rigging which sparked the Orange Revolution.
That is likely to please those who denounced the deal and subsequently switched allegiance from Mr Yushchenko to the charismatic Ms Tymoshenko, whom the president sacked as prime minister last September.
"Before sending documents to scrap parliamentary decisions, one needs first to scrap wrong policies, because parliament's decision resulted from the authorities' actions. This is simply a fuss which is neither legal nor constitutional," Ms Tymoshenko said yesterday.
