Yushchenko Vows to Prosecute Political Crimes if Elected

Ukrainian opposition leader Viktor Yushchenko, seated, talks to members of parliament after a vote on changes to the powers of presidency. (Reuters)

The reforms alter the composition of the Central Elections Commission as well as regional and local commissions, allowing each candidate equal representation at all levels. Absentee ballots, which Western monitors said were a major source of abuse in the last round of voting, will have to be signed by representatives of both Yushchenko and Yanukovych to be valid.

Voting at sites other than polling stations by the disabled and others will be restricted to prevent what was another major source of alleged fraud. Each campaign will get voter lists four days before the voting to check for anomalies. The electronic transfer of vote counts from the regions to the center will have to match tallies sent by telegraph.

Yanukovych, who campaigned in eastern Ukraine on Wednesday, said he was "not happy" with the parliamentary decision, describing it as a "soft coup d'etat."

Passed by a 401 to 21 vote, with 19 abstentions, the reforms will redistribute power among the president, the parliament and the country's administrative regions, ostensibly allowing no single branch of government to dominate political life as Kuchma has for the past 10 years. For Kuchma and the current government, the changes will provide a hedge against Yushchenko if he wins the presidency and uses his office to assault their political and economic position.

The election has divided the country along geographic lines and drawn in foreign countries in patterns that matched those of the Cold War. Russia all but backed Yanukovych and the government, while the United States and the E.U. backed the opposition's condemnation of last month's runoff.

In the interview, Yushchenko said he now wanted to harmonize relations between his domestic supporters and those that have opposed him, who are largely concentrated in parts of eastern and southern Ukraine that have large populations of Russian speakers.

"I would like to pay more attention to getting rid of the myth of divisions," he said, arguing that the east-west divide was a fiction invented by "local czars." He offered no details about how he would close the gap.

Some politicians in eastern Ukraine have raised the possibility of breaking from the rest of the country if Yushchenko wins the presidency.

Yushchenko reasserted that Russia is a strategic partner of Ukraine's, but noted, "We don't want my country to be shown as a colony or feudal enclave." For many people, Russia is "a nostalgic thing, so we have to take this into account," he said.

Yushchenko said his primary policy goal was to join the European Union and anchor Western values in Ukraine.

He said he wanted "a non-corrupt power . . . an open and competitive market and freedom of speech" in a country where a "journalist's head is not cut off because his position is different from the authorities."

Yushchenko appeared to choose his words carefully when discussing a recent parliamentary decision to pull Ukraine's 1,700 troops out of Iraq. He said their mission to help dispose of weapons of mass destruction was largely over because no such weapons have been found. Any withdrawal would be coordinated with the Iraqi government and "our partners and allies," and military participation would be replaced with financial aid and active diplomacy, he said.

When he mounted the large stage to face the crowd at Independence Square, which was decked out in the orange colors of his campaign, tears came to Yushchenko's eyes. The demonstrators chanted his name -- "Yu-shchen-ko!" -- and he responded by placing his hand on his heart.

"The glory of the orange revolution is glory to you," he said. "The most important part is, everything we did, we did without a single drop of blood."