02 December 2004, 10:27 Politics

The presidents of Ukraine did not agree

Ksenia Solyanskaya Yesterday's negotiations between Leonid Kuchma, Viktor Yushchenko and Viktor Yanukovych in the presence of international mediators actually failed. The only thing we managed to firmly agree on was the next meeting with the same composition.

Peace talks between the two presidential candidates, mediated by Leonid Kuchma, Javier Solana, Valdas Adamkus , Alexander Kwasniewski , Boris Gryzlov Secretary General , OSCE Jan Kubis and Verkhovna Rada Speaker Vladimir Lytvyn , took place for the second time. They all arrived again at the Mariinsky Palace and took their places at the round table. Journalists were not allowed into the negotiations. From the entire conversation, only one episode became known, which was retold by the opposition Ukrainian online newspaper Ukrainska Pravda. As she reported, citing her sources, Kuchma first of all complained that the opposition surrounded the dacha of his daughter Elena Franchuk and did not let her out of the territory for some time, and asked to leave his family members alone.

When the meeting participants went to the press conference, it became clear that, like last time, they had different interpretations of the agreements on all fundamental issues, including the procedure for determining the new president of Ukraine.

As you know, Viktor Yushchenko , although he demands that the Supreme Court recognize himself as the winner in the first round, in principle agrees to hold a repeat second round, in which only he and Yanukovych will take part, for whom the latest events in Ukraine clearly did not add points. Kuchma yesterday spoke out against a repeat vote, although, judging by statements in recent days, the authorities are ready to hold new elections, retaking everything, including nominating a new candidate.

According to Yushchenko, the new second round will be held anew, as he wanted, and more specifically, everything will need to be decided within 24 hours after the verdict of the Supreme Court, which is now considering the opposition’s claim to invalidate the results of the last vote and should make a decision on Thursday or Friday. “We believe that now the legal moment has come to resolve the situation. After the Supreme Court decision, lawyers develop a plan within 24 hours to complete the election. Then I will have the moral right to go to the Maidan and say that in 10 days we did what someone could not do in a hundred years. We are going to the elections, we need observers, we need new members of the commissions, I ask you to register as such legionnaires,” Yushchenko said after the negotiations and went to Maidan Nezalezhnosti, where he repeated the same thing.

also spoke about re-voting Solana , although he did not rule out that two rounds would have to be held. Kuchma did not touch upon this topic at all.

Nothing specific about new elections, or about the 24 hours within which this issue must be resolved, was said in the agreement that the negotiators signed.

The document said only one thing about this: “The parties agreed to create an expert group to conduct an urgent legal analysis and make appropriate proposals to complete the presidential elections in Ukraine based on the relevant decision of the Supreme Court of Ukraine.” In fact, the only thing we managed to agree on for sure was new negotiations with international mediators, which will also take place immediately after the verdict of the Ukrainian Armed Forces.

They also talked about the revolutionary situation in Kyiv and the blockade of government buildings, which was again announced by the opposition. Judging by the text of the peace treaty, the mediators managed to persuade Yushchenko to lift the siege of the government in exchange for Kuchma’s promise not to use force, which he, however, gave immediately after the unrest began. “The parties confirm their determination to exclude the possibility of using force to solve problems that arose after the second round of presidential elections in Ukraine,” the first paragraph read. “The parties agreed on the urgent unblocking of the work of government bodies and the creation of conditions for them to perform their functions,” the second said.

But as it turned out later, the opposition is not at all going to carry out all this, since since yesterday, when the parliament, at the instigation of Yushchenko, voted for no confidence in the government, it does not consider Yanukovych to be the legitimate prime minister. At the same time, he himself does not consider the decision of the Verkhovna Rada to be legal.

“The thesis about unblocking the Cabinet is acceptable. After all, the blocking began as a demand for the government’s responsibility for falsification, separatism and the economic crisis,” one of Yushchenko’s associates, Petro Poroshenko , told Ukrayinska Pravda. — After the prime minister vacates the premises, we will lift the blockade. There is no government , it is retired, and this decision does not require further action on the part of the president or prime minister.” The agreement, of course, does not mention Yanukovych’s resignation at all.