Yanukovich favors talks with opposition
Print Edition
Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovich backed a call for talks with the opposition yesterday to end weeks of protests in Kiev, but tension was high with pro-Europe demonstrators barricading their protest camp in preparation for police intervention.
As riot police took up new positions in the capital Kiev, heavyweight boxing champion-turned-opposition politician Vitaly Klitschko urged protesters to stand their ground, and warned Yanukovich he would have blood on his hands if security forces tried to end the stand off violently.
With pressure growing on a shaky economy, the presidential website said Yanukovich supported a proposal for round-table talks involving the authorities and the opposition as a possible “platform for mutual understanding.”
No date was given for when the reconciliation talks could be held. Nor was it clear what the united opposition’s reaction to Yanukovich’s proposal would be.
But it was the first real sign by Yanukovich — whose switch in trade policy away from the European Union toward Russia on November 21 provoked the unrest — that he might be ready to listen to opposition demands for the resignation of his government and early elections.
Despite his words, tension rose sharply on the streets after riot police units moved to take up their positions at potential flashpoints. Demonstrators, responding to calls from opposition leaders, threw up new blocks in streets blanketed by snow after a heavy fall overnight to seal off their main protest camp on Kiev’s Independence Square.
“The opposition must stay here and do everything to stop the police from breaking up a peaceful demonstration,” Klitschko said.
“We call on people to stand their ground, and peacefully, without using force or aggression, to defend their right to live in a free country,” Klitschko said.
The protesters have been inflamed by a police crackdown on November 30 and European Commissioner Jose Manuel Barroso, who spoke to Yanukovich by phone on Sunday, led Western calls yesterday for authorities not to react violently.
“Those young people in the streets of Ukraine in freezing temperatures are writing the new narrative for Europe,” Barroso said in Milan.
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