New Ukraine Vote Gains Momentum

Ukraine's parliament declared the country's disputed presidential election invalid in a symbolic vote after a week of growing street protests and allegations of vote fraud, adding momentum to demands for a revote.

An aide to Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych said that negotiators representing the two presidential campaigns had not met Sunday.

Stepan Havrysh, who is participating in the talks for Yanukovych, said the prime minister's campaign team was still optimistic that the talks might get under way Monday.

But he said that Yanukovych's campaign was upset over the Ukrainian parliament's declaration on Saturday.

The action - approved by 255 of the 429 legislators present - was not legally binding, but it was a clear demonstration of rising dissatisfaction with the standoff between Russian-backed Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych and Viktor Yushchenko.

The legislators also passed a vote of no-confidence in the Central Elections Commission, which said Yanukovych won the Nov. 21 presidential election. The no-confidence vote also had no legal force, but it increases pressure on Yanukovych and his camp.

Yushchenko, whose supporters took to the streets in massive protests, has demanded a repeat election, and international support for a revote has been growing.

The Unian news agency, citing Russia's RIA-Novosti, quoted Russian Foreign Ministry spokesman Alexander Yakovenko as saying Friday that Moscow regarded a potential revote favorably - an apparently significant retreat from its earlier insistence that the Nov. 21 elections were fair and valid.

The United States and other Western nations contend the vote was marred by massive fraud.

A European Union envoy - Dutch Foreign Minister Ben Bot - said new elections were the "ideal outcome" for the standoff. Asked if new elections were the only solution, Ben Bot answered: "Yes."

Bot, speaking in the capacity of the Dutch presidency of the European Union, said the Ukrainian parliament would need to pass new law enabling the country's current president, Leonid Kuchma, to call the new elections.

Bot's comments came after he consulted in the Hague with the EU special envoy to the Ukraine, Niek Biegman, who returned from Kiev on Saturday morning.

Bot added that Biegman received assurance from Kuchma that no violence would be used against crowds gathered in Kiev to support both candidates.

Ukraine's parliament has no legal capacity to directly affect the election results. But speaker Volodymyr Lytvyn said, "The most realistic political decision, taking into account the mutual claims of massive violations, is to pronounce the elections invalid."

"The Central Election Commission discredited itself in the first round, undermining public trust in the institution as it is," Lytvyn said.

Outside the parliament building, more than 7,000 opposition protesters encircled the building, chanting "Yushchenko!" Police stood near the building's entrances and watched.

Prospects for a resolution of the crisis by the working group, made up of four people from each campaign, appeared slim.

Yushchenko told his supporters he was insisting on a new election by Dec. 12 and he would give the talks with his rival two days at most to yield results.

"Kuchma and Yanukovych want to drag out time," said Ivan Plyushch, one of four Yushchenko supporters who were to participate in the working group, told The Associated Press. "But if in the next two days the situation doesn't develop, we'll return to active measures." Plyushch refused to elaborate.

Havrysh said the prime minister's team would make no further comments until the working group had reached a decision.

Yushchenko has also demanded that the membership of the Central Election Commission be changed, absentee balloting be prohibited, the candidates be given equal access to the media and that international observers participate.

Hundreds of thousands of protesters have massed in the Ukrainian capital all week to protect what they insist was Yushchenko's election victory. Rising temperatures and wet snow on Saturday left their sprawling tent camp along a main avenue and the central Independence Square in a sea of slush.

"I am not hopeful and don't have faith in talks, so I plan to stand on the square until the end," said Ruslan Pokatai, 23, of Sumy. He has already spent five nights in the freezing cold but said he was willing to wait longer if it would mean Yushchenko becomes president.

Tens of thousands of Yanukovych supporters rallied in Donetsk, an industrial city in eastern Ukraine, to call for a referendum to grant the region autonomy. Calls in the region for greater autonomy in the event of a Yushchenko presidency have intensified in recent days.

Yanukovych's Party of Regions scheduled an urgent session in the eastern city of Luhansk for Sunday to discuss autonomy, lawmaker Anatoliy Blyzniuk told protesters gathered there.

"Some 15 million people have said: Yanukovych is our president," he said. "It is not just that (Luhansk) region, it is the entire southeast of the country that wants that (autonomy) option."

Moscow considers this nation of 48 million part of its sphere of influence and a buffer between Russia and NATO's eastern flank. The United States and the European Union have said they cannot accept the results and warned Ukraine of "consequences" in relations with the West.

President Bush has said the world "is watching very closely" and he hoped the crisis would be "resolved in a way that brings credit and confidence to the Ukrainian government."

In Moscow, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said the Kremlin was concerned by the West's attempts to influence events in Ukraine, "especially when some European capitals say that they don't accept the elections and their next thesis is that Ukraine must be with the West."

In addition to driving a wedge between Russia and the West, the crisis has exacerbated the stark divide between the pro-Russian, heavily industrialized eastern half of Ukraine, where Yanukovych draws his support, and the west, Yushchenko's stronghold, which is a traditional center of nationalism.