KIEV: Ukraine’s feuding president and prime minister failed again yesterday to agree on a date for an election, prolonging political uncertainty.
In April, pro-Western President Viktor Yushchenko dissolved the largely hostile parliament and ordered the poll in an attempt to end months of disagreements with Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovich, who favours Moscow.
Yanukovich opposed the vote for weeks, but eventually agreed.
The two leaders held talks last weekend and their camps said after that meeting they were “100%” confident the long-awaited date for the election would have been set yesterday.
But after more than a week of talks, a working group which brings together all parties involved in the conflict failed on Tuesday to agree on a draft of laws needed for the new poll.
“Yushchenko and ... Yanukovich proposed the working group must work to accomplish whatever can be agreed upon in one or two days,” Security Council head Ivan Plyushch told journalists after Yushchenko met Yanukovich yesterday.
“The (election) date will be named after final agreements.” He declined to say when that point could be reached.
Yushchenko favours a date at the end of June or beginning of July, Yanukovich’s allies say the polls cannot be held earlier than September, and preferably in October.
First Deputy Prime Minister Mykola Azarov, a Yanukovich loyalist in the premier’s Regions Party, said there was no agreement because “of the hugeness and complexity of the problems”. He also declined to elaborate.
Yushchenko had threatened the working group there could be no further delays and he could force a decision through the Security Council if no deal was reached.
Yushchenko surprised many on Saturday by dismissing the head of the Security Council, wealthy industrialist Vitaly Haiduk, and appointing Plyushch, a skilful Soviet-era functionary and a former parliament speaker, to the post.
Yushchenko beat Yanukovich in a rerun of a rigged 2004 presidential election and has promoted Nato and European Union membership and liberal economic policies.
