Twitter
StumbleUpon
Facebook
Delicious
Digg
Newsvine
Google
Yahoo
TechnoratiUkraine Leader Claims 'Coup' Ahead of Cheney Visit
KIEV - Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko claimed Wednesday he was the victim of a "coup" attempt after parliament approved laws trimming presidential powers ahead of a visit by US Vice President Dick Cheney.
![[Azeribaijan's Deputy Prime Minister Yagub Eiubov (left) greets US Vice President Dick Cheney in Baku. Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko claimed Wednesday he was the victim of a "coup" attempt after parliament approved laws trimming presidential powers ahead of a visit by US Vice President Dick Cheney. (AFP Photo)]](http://www.commondreams.org/files/article_images/cheneyukraine.jpg "cheneyukraine.jpg")
"A political and constitutional coup d'etat has started in the parliament," Yushchenko said in a televised speech on Wednesday, a day after parliament passed laws reducing his powers and making it easier to impeach him.
Members of parliament from the president's Our Ukraine party earlier pulled out of the ruling coalition with Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko's party after her Tymoshenko Bloc and the pro-Moscow opposition passed the laws.
Tymoshenko, Yushchenko's partner in the 2004 "Orange Revolution," said the governing coalition had been "destroyed" thanks to the president, adding however that the government would stay in place for now.
In a challenge to his prime minister, Yushchenko threatened to dissolve the parliament and call early elections if a new coalition between the Tymoshenko Bloc and the pro-Moscow opposition was not formed within 30 days.
Tymoshenko has previously ruled out the possibility of a coalition between her pro-Western party and the pro-Russian Regions Party. Yushchenko's threat may therefore be an attempt to force a repeal of the new laws trimming presidential powers.
Yushchenko appeared to warn against Moscow's influence, saying: "The Tymoshenko Bloc has accepted union with the Regions Party and the Communists. The basis of this formation is not Ukrainian, I underline not Ukrainian."
The leader of Yushchenko's Our Ukraine party, Vyacheslav Kirilenko, said the laws were changed "in order to take powers away from the president... just what the Kremlin has been asking certain political forces to do."
He also referred to the Regions and Tymoshenko Bloc as a "pro-Kremlin majority."
The political crisis in Ukraine comes amid worsening relations with Russia over its conflict last month with Georgia, a key US ally in the region like Ukraine and a fellow aspirant NATO members.
"De facto, a new parliamentary coalition has been created," Yushchenko said referring to the Tymoshenko Bloc's decision to vote with the Regions Party, led by former prime minister and key Moscow ally Viktor Yanukovych.
Before the Ukrainian president's announcement, Tymoshenko was quoted by Interfax news agency as saying: "I regret that the president is behaving in such an irresponsible way. The coalition has been destroyed on his request."
The decision by lawmakers from Yushchenko's party to pull out of the coalition would come into force in 10 days if sustained. It was approved on Wednesday by a majority of 39 out of the party's 72 deputies in the parliament.
Despite sharing his pro-Western political goals including accession to NATO and the European Union, Tymoshenko has often been sharply at odds with the president and there is intense personal rivalry between the two.
The sudden flare-up in Ukraine came a day ahead of a planned visit to Kiev by Cheney, a trip seen as a show of Washington's backing for the pro-Western policy course pursued by Yushchenko, often against strong domestic opposition.
Cheney arrived earlier Wednesday in ex-Soviet Azerbaijan and was due to meet Thursday in Tbilisi with Georgia's US-backed president, Mikheil Saakashvili, whom Russian President Dmitry Medvedev has declared a "political corpse."
In a sign of deepening divisions in Ukraine, the governing coalition on Tuesday also failed to agree a joint declaration on the conflict between Russia and Georgia, which like Ukraine is bidding to join NATO and the European Union.
Yushchenko recently accused Tymoshenko of "high treason and political corruption" for allegedly siding with Moscow over the conflict with Georgia last month, a charge she has denied.
Tymoshenko abstained from a vote in Ukraine's Security Council last month imposing restrictions on the movements of Russia's Black Sea fleet, which is based in southern Ukraine and was involved in military action against Georgia.
European officials including French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner and EU Enlargement Commissioner Olli Rehn have warned Ukraine could be the next target of political pressure from Russia in its mounting stand-off with the West.
7 Comments so far
Show AllA huge part of Ukraine's "problem" is that its' borders were made during Stalin's reign, when the Russian predominant eastern regions (including the Crimea) were added. Not too surprisingly, the Russian areas are pro-Kremlin, while the western part of Ukraine (where the ethnic make-up is majority Ukrainian) is more oriented towards the West. Add in the historical element of Kiev being the birthplace of Russian culture (oddly akin to the way the way the Serbs fetish over Kosovo), and the possibility for mischief is huge. That America's Darth Vader pokes his nose into it only makes the whole scene that much more scary.
Actually Cheney has a lot to do with the Ukraine. All US aid has been linked to Yushchenko's promise to Washington to 'privatize' state industries and to allow US corporations to purchase these same industries. The pressure by the US is substantial and recent comments about Tymoshenko's 'pro-Moscow' stance has more to do with her resistance to allow foreign corporations an opportunity to steal public Ukrainian assets. Cheney meanwhile is the ultimate Neo-Con, corporate lackie who never ceases waging war against the poor and middle class in the name of big business. The carrot is that vague promise of 'aid' which generally translates into corporate built military hardware and not much else.
Yep, Putin is methodically playing his hand out and Team Bush has so overextended the U.S. economically and militarily there isn't jack Amurka's Fossil Fool, Big Munitions and Big Media Oligarchs can afford to do about it except also fool themselves into thinking they can afford another multi-decades Cold War along with their open-ended "Long War" on oil and natural gas-rich Muslim nations. As our economy gradually accelerates it implosion, those half a trillion dollar-plus annual defense budgets are going to become more and more unaffordable, all the privatized intell and merc whores determined to multiply and prolong wars and milk the Warfare State teat will drop like rotten fruit after a full radical mastectomy and Russia is going to reclaim more and more of its old Soviet-era territory. They have formed a military and economic bloc with China and will cut all the separate energy deals they need within their own spheres of influence--with more on-hand capital to do it with. Team Bush blew the Amurkan belligerence wad in eight short years like the Cialis junkie pricks they are and our true economic competitiveness with these other big players along with it.
The peckerwood arrogance and level of idiotic self-deception of Clinton and his people and Team Bush to think they could separately carve up those former Soviet satellite nations and control their regimes and pipelines--and that Russia would never again be in an economic position to reassert itself over such vast areas contiguous to its present borders was folly to begin with. Like so many other neo-lib, neo-con policy follies the pigs running these regimes were so intent biting off new chunks of real estate and resources that they never properly digested any of it or consolidated true control of anything. "Influence" over easily militarily targeted, far-flung pipelines isn't the same thing as control.
"The free world cannot allow the destiny of a small independent country to be determined by the aggression of a larger neighbor," Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice
Doesnt that pretty much sum up the history of the USA? And not only neighbours..the USA is the only country on the planet that flys its military half way around the planet JUST to interfere with small independent countrys.
Maybe the Russians just got some "Manifest Destiny" from GOD????
"The only means of strengthening one's intellect is to make up one's mind about nothing, to let the mind be a thoroughfare for all thoughts." - John Keats
Considering that Yushchenko's popularity ratings are in the single digits, the trimming of is presidential powers has not come soon enough. Even his own allies have turned against for his dangerous manoeuvres baiting Russia and dickering with NATO.
... parliament approved laws trimming presidential powers ...
Who's powers? Yushchenko's or Cheney's
Dude! Cheney has absolutely nothing to deo with the story which is about Ukranian politics. Even the picture accompanying the story is of Cheney being greeted by an official of Azerbaijan, a neighboring former Soviet Socialist Republic. The significance for the US is that as Russia gets uneasy about the political maneuvers in its neighboring former Soviet satellites, it increases the liklihood of yet more violence and possible warfare in a world already afflicted with too much of that.
Poet