Ukraine faces political crisis

Yushchenko faces a vote of no confidence

KIEV, Ukraine -- The Ukraine's two most senior politicians are at the centre of controversies that threaten both their careers.

And beleaguered Ukraine President Leonid Kuchma is now leading moves to head off a no-confidence vote in Prime Minister Viktor Yushchenko's reformist government, scheduled for Thursday.

The parliamentary crisis is being compounded by allegations surrounding Kuchma and the disappearance of an outspoken journalist.

Two U.S. forensic experts have arrived in Ukraine to help identify remains believed to be those Heorhiy Gongadze, an outspoken critic of alleged high-level corruption, who went missing in Kiev in September.

Opposition movements accuse the president and his top aides of involvement in Gongadze's disappearance and have seized on the case to support their demand for the Kuchma's removal.

With continuing street protests demanding he step down, Kuchma had previously offered only lukewarm support to Yushchenko, but has now volunteered to mediate between the government and the parliament, the Verkhovna Rada.

The Rada voted overwhelmingly last week to deem Cabinet work unsatisfactory, and scheduled a no-confidence vote for Thursday.

Yushchenko, a former central banker named to lead the government in late 1999, is credited with reviving the country's chronically sluggish economic reforms and achieving the first signs of economic progress since Ukraine's independence in 1991.

But the prime minister's opponents, led by Petro Symonenko accuse Yushchenko and his allies of being "puppets of the West" and of the International Monetary Fund.

In an interview published Wednesday in the Russian daily newspaper Nezavisimaya Gazeta, Yushchenko said Ukraine's economic reforms were irreversible in spite of the political turmoil.

"For every realistic, thoughtful person, Ukraine's economic course has no alternative," said Yushchenko, who has predicted he will be toppled.

On the Gongadze probe, the American forensic team, consisting of an FBI laboratory DNA expert and a forensic pathologist with the U.S. Armed Forces Institute of Pathology, is expected to remain in Ukraine until Sunday.

Russian experts had concluded that a beheaded body found near Kiev in November is that of the journalist but German experts, who examined samples supposedly taken from the same body by Gongadze's associates, cast doubts on the findings.

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Ukraine
Ukraine Parliament
International Monetary Fund
The World Bank

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