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UKRAINE
Deepens
Sun Nov 28, 2004 06:13 PM ET
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By Jonathan Thatcher
KIEV (Reuters) - Ukraine's top court sits on Monday to try to solve an election crisis that threatens to break the country apart and is straining relations between Russia and the West.
But legal experts said the case is so complex that the Supreme Court is unlikely to be able to satisfy either side in the bitter dispute about whether Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovich won the presidential election through mass fraud.
Opposition leader Viktor Yushchenko wants his rival's victory in the Nov. 21 run-off be annulled due to fraud and a new vote on Dec. 12.
Ukraine's highest legal body, the court consists of about 100 judges and up to 40 may sit on Monday. Their names remain secret until the last minute to guard against pressure on them.
Its rulings have sometimes been at odds with the line adopted by authorities.
Before the first round on Oct. 31, the court rejected a plan by election authorities to open more polling stations in Russia, where Yanukovich was expected to win many votes.
After the first round, it overruled the same officials by ordering disputed results from a region favorable to Yushchenko to be included in the count.
The court initially refused to hear Yushchenko's case.
But last Friday, it temporarily froze the election dispute by agreeing to examine it and barred publication of the results as they stand. That delayed Yanukovich's inauguration, which cannot take place until results appear in the official gazette.
"There are so many options, so many nuances that implementing one of the court's rulings might prove extremely difficult," Mykola Melnyk of the Supreme Council of Justice overseeing Ukraine's court system told Reuters.
"A ruling could even complicate attempts to resolve the conflict."
BREAK-UP A THREAT
Several Western governments had urged Ukraine not to declare Yanukovich the winner until investigations were made into the election just over a week ago which independent observers say contained too much cheating to be a legitimate result.
Tens of thousands of orange-draped Yushchenko supporters have rallied daily in Kiev since last Sunday, bringing the center of the capital to a halt and blockading key government offices.
Firebrand deputy Yulia Tymoshenko, a Yushchenko aide, demanded a coalition government be formed. She also urged supporters to mass outside the Supreme Court "to defend it from the pressure from the authorities."
Polish President Aleksander Kwasniewski, an influential figure in the region who has credibility on both sides in Ukraine, said Yushchenko was likely to become next president.
But he added that a break-up was a real threat in Ukraine.
That fear was underscored on Sunday, when a pro-Yanukovich region in the east of the country, set a referendum for Dec. 5 on forming a republic within a federal Ukrainian state.
In another region, also backing Yanukovich, delegates to a regional conference from Russian-speaking parts of the east and south of Ukraine came out in favor of referendum "to determine the region's status" -- a euphemism for autonomy.
Yanukovich refused to back that move but accused his rival of taking Ukraine to the edge of catastrophe.
Yushchenko retorted that it was the authorities who were playing the "dangerous card of separatism."
The election has also underscored the divide between the western and eastern sides of Ukraine, rooted in differences in history and language.
With his support for gradual integration with the European Union, Yushchenko has unnerved a Moscow desperate to stop any further erosion of the influence it once held over the former Soviet empire.
In contrast, Yanukovich represents much clearer continuity with the pro-Moscow regime of outgoing President Leonid Kuchma.
The attacks on the validity of the election has clearly irked the Kremlin which has questioned whether some in the West are trying to redraw Ukraine's borders.
© Reuters 2004. All Rights Reserved.
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