13.12 Ukraine Opposition Agrees to Parley With President
KIEV, December 13 (RIA Novosti) – Ukrainian opposition leaders were set to hold talks Friday with President Viktor Yanukovych in a step that could assist in soothing political tensions in the former Soviet state.
Arseny Yatsenyuk, head of the Batkivshchyna (Fatherland) faction in parliament, said he and two fellow opposition leaders would use the encounter to lay out their demands to Yanukovych.
Protests in Ukraine, focused in the capital, Kiev, have been raging since the government last month pulled out of preparations to sign landmark political and trade deals with the EU, sparking widespread indignation.
"We want the release of political prisoners. Second, we want the punishment of those responsible for the dispersal of peaceful demonstrations. And finally, we demand early presidential and parliamentary elections," Yatsenyuk said, speaking from a stage on Kiev's Independence Square, which has served as the focal point for protests since last month.
The "Unite Ukraine" roundtable intended to bring together the country's leadership and the opposition for negotiations was initiated by former President Leonid Kravchcuk, who served as the country's first post-Soviet head of state until mid-1994.
While nationwide discontent was initially focused on the reversal of course over the EU – a move the authorities justified by stating it was necessary to boost economic ties with neighboring Russia – it has with time taken on a more generalized anti-government flavor.
The authorities have alternately signaled possible negotiation with the opposition while also occasionally attempting heavy-handed clearances of Independence Square.
Riot police and Interior Ministry forces clashed with opposition supporters in Kiev early Wednesday, while municipal services removed barricades that protesters put up in the streets to disrupt access to government buildings.
Police said later that they were only working to dismantle the barricades impeding traffic, not to disband the protest camp itself.
But the authorities’ attempts to clear Independence Square and the city hall building, which has also been taken over by demonstrators, were thwarted and barricades were put back in place.
In a show of reconciliation, however, Yanukovych on Friday proposed granting amnesty to people detained during mass unrest that erupted outside the presidential administration building late last month.
