Confident Ukraine leader spurns deal

Yuschenko supporters were back on the streets a day after the Supreme Court set aside Viktor Yanukovich's victory. Picture / Reuters

KIEV - Opposition leader Viktor Yushchenko, fresh from securing a rerun of Ukraine's disputed election, tore up a deal to reduce the President's powers and told his supporters to keep up pressure on the streets.

A day after the Supreme Court annulled last month's presidential vote, saying it had been rigged in favour of Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovich, Yushchenko rejected further dialogue with outgoing President Leonid Kuchma as meaningless.

The court decision appeared to give Yushchenko's camp confidence that they could afford to spurn a deal, brokered by Kuchma, to legislate curbs on the presidency's powers in exchange for reform of the misused electoral system.

A rowdy session of Parliament was adjourned after the deal broke down.

"We will put pressure on the Parliament and on Leonid Kuchma," Taras Stetskiv, an MP from Yushchenko's party, told tens of thousands of orange-clad supporters in Kiev. "We will force them to play by our rules."

Yushchenko later told the crowd: "They understood that victory would not be theirs, it will be ours, so they decided to change the constitution to reduce the President's powers."

Two weeks of street protests in support of Western-oriented Yushchenko have threatened to divide the country and pitted the West against Russia, which had openly supported Yanukovich's bid to succeed Kuchma. The rerun of the vote is set for December 26.

Yanukovich confirmed he would run in the new poll, although his spokeswoman said the court ruling had been made under huge political pressure. She insisted he would win again.

- REUTERS