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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: kumar who wrote (44631)	9/17/2002 2:53:48 AM
From: maceng2	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

15,000 Rally for Kuchma to Resign themoscowtimes.com By Tim Vickery The Associated Press KIEV -- Some 15,000 demonstrators marched in Kiev and tens of thousands of others gathered in public squares around the country Monday, demanding that President Leonid Kuchma resign or call new elections. In one of the largest demonstrations since Ukraine's independence 12 years ago, protesters from diverse opposition groups blocked Kiev's main thoroughfare, chanting "Away With Kuchma!" A broad-based coalition of opposition groups organized the protests, saying the president and his administration are mired in corruption that is stifling democratic rule and economic development. "Our demands to the president are just," Socialist party leader Oleksandr Moroz told his fellow protesters. "We have one aim -- for truth and for an honest life in Ukraine," he added. The crowd roared. The protest organizers were buoyed by a last-minute pledge of support from former Prime Minister Viktor Yushchenko. Tensions have been rising steadily since the March 31 parliamentary election, in which opposition parties won the bulk of the popular vote. The election was seen as gauging Kuchma's popularity after eight years of rule. The campaign of the pro-Kuchma party, created just a few months earlier, was considered a rehearsal for him or a hand-picked successor in 2004 presidential elections. Moroz opened the protest Monday with a minute of silence to commemorate the death of crusading Internet journalist Georgy Gongadze and other "victims of the [Kuchma] regime." The demonstration was timed to mark the second anniversary of Gongadze's disappearance. The discovery of his beheaded body in October 2000 touched off months of protests as the opposition accused Kuchma of involvement. Kuchma denied the accusations. "We're here to push Kuchma and all the thieves from power because it's not Ukrainians but the mafia that's ruling the country," said Semen Vilous, 77, from the Kiev suburb of Zhuliany. Across Ukraine, all television broadcasts were blocked until shortly before the protest. Officials said they were conducting maintenance, but they had always staggered the maintenance before. "Without your true information about what is happening in the square, the nation will be blind," Yushchenko said in an appeal to the media. Citing their constitutional right to peaceful assembly, protest leaders proceeded with the demonstration in defiance of a court decision last week ordering the protests to be moved to an airfield outside Kiev. Police surrounded the area Monday, warning the marchers through loudspeakers not to protest in the city center and to keep the peace. "Those [demonstrators] are your children, brothers and sisters," Yushchenko told police patrolling the crowd. "Don't let provocations happen today. Respect your oath to Ukraine." n Kuchma, attending the European World Economic Forum in Salzburg, Austria, on Monday, called for the European Union to extend to Ukraine, Reuters reported. He said Ukraine had no interest in signing a series of cooperation agreements with the EU and failure to include Ukraine in the union would be responsible for a huge division that would prevent "a big Christian nation belonging to a united Europe." But Kuchma received little encouragement from Gßnter Verheugen, the top European Commission official in charge of enlargement. Verheugen, sharing a platform with Kuchma, tactfully suggested that there was no way of knowing what the EU would look like after the first round of enlargement and no way of knowing how it would cope with the potential accession of Ukraine.