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Derechos | Equipo Nizkor
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Derechos | Equipo Nizkor
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21Feb14
Peace hopes in the air as president loses his powers
The agreement - apparently made under the threat of martial law - had weakened President Yanukovych and promised elections by December but many Ukrainians are disappointed.
European leaders claimed Friday night to have brokered a peace deal stopping further bloodshed in Ukraine, potentially paving the way for the release of Julia Tymoshenko, the country's most celebrated political prisoner.
After three days of street violence that have left nearly 100 people dead, the government and opposition signed a deal Friday afternoon committing both sides to end he bloodshed.
The agreement - apparently made under the threat of martial law - immediately restored the country's 2004 constitution, stripping President Viktor Yanukovych of much of his sweeping executive powers, and will lead to fresh elections by December.
As news of the agreement spread, thousands of protesters gathered in Independence Square to watch big screens showing MPs in parliament passing a flurry of new resolutions. Among them was one to free Yulia Tymoshenko, the imprisoned former prime minister.
The heroine of Ukraine's 2004 Orange Revolution, which toppled a previous pro-Moscow regime, is currently serving a seven-year jail sentence on what are widely regarded to be trumped up charges of abuse of office.
It was far from clear, though, whether the deal would mark a final end to the crisis, which began three months ago when Mr Yanukovych succumbed to Russian pressure not to sign a trade deal with EU.
Many of the 40,000 protesters who were still occupying downtown Kiev Friday night insisted that they would not give up until Mr Yanukovych resigned. Russia, meanwhile, hinted that it did not recognise the legitimacy of the deal. Moscow's envoy to the peace talks, Vladimir Lukin, said that he skipped the signature ceremony "because several questions remain unanswered".
The White House pleaded that the crisis in Ukraine be viewed "not as a tug of war between East and West or the United States and Russia".
The agreement also took place under what appeared to be the threat of an all-out attack on the protesters by the security forces, who have already been accused of deploying snipers to shoot dead scores of people.
Radek Sikorski, the Polish foreign minister, effectively told reluctant opposition leaders to sign or die as marathon talks that had already kept negotiators up all night dragged into Friday afternoon.
"If you don't support the [deal] you'll have martial law, you'll have the army. You will all be dead," he told a group of opposition negotiators after they appeared to waver over signing the deal. He later said that his remarks - intended to be private but picked up by an ITV television microphone - had been based on reports he had received that "interior ministry troops were being readied".
Likewise, the French foreign minister, Laurent Fabius, spoke of the "terrifying atmosphere" in which the two-day peace talks had taken place, describing the deal as merely "the best that we could have hoped for".
"It's the exit from the crisis," he said. "In any case everything is set up for that. It was very hard to reach agreement because it needed hours and hours of negotiations ... and in a terrifying atmosphere as there were dozens of dead," he added.
He added that negotiators had had to spend ten hours in talks with Mr Yanukovych, whom he accused of being "used to power" and unwilling to share it.
Within hours of the deal's signing in the presidential palace's Blue Hall, Ukraine's parliament passed a series of opposition-backed laws, which Mr Yanukovych will now be under pressure to sign.
One vote was to amend a law that led to the jailing of Ms Tymoshenko, whose release the EU has long pressed for.
The chamber also asked the president to dismiss acting Interior Minister Vitaliy Zakharchenko, who is blamed for ordering the police to open fire on unarmed protesters.
A new national unity government is also to be formed within ten days. Crucially, it will have the authority to reverse the decision that Mr Yanukovych took last November not to press ahead with the EU trade deal.
Unspecified "new electoral laws" will also be passed and a new Central Election Commission formed. A joint investigation will be conducted into violence, in conjunction with the Council of Europe, and Parliament will also pass an amnesty for protesters arrested or charged with crimes during the crisis.
A sense of euphoria appeared to grip protesters as they cheered with each resolution that was passed. But many vowed to continue their fight.
"Yanukovych is playing for time, so he says elections in December. Well we're not going to take that. We say he goes now, tonight," said Vyacheslav Polanski, a 58 year old Kiev native who has spent 35 days on the square. "You can't stop when you are winning. The blow must be decisive."
"Elections in December are not enough. He has to leave now. Otherwise he could end up like Gaddafi or Ceausescu," added demonstrator Oleh Bukoyenko, a ribbon with "Glory to the heroes" pinned to his chest.
Pravy Sektor, a Ukrainian nationalist paramilitary group whose fighters have played a prominent role in fighting since January, also rejected the deal outright.
"After reading Mr Yanukovych's statement, we must state the obvious fact that the criminal regime is still not sufficiently aware of either the graveness of their own misdeeds or the depths of the people's anger," the group said. "The national revolution continues."
The US president, Barack Obama, and the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, were due to hold talks by phone Friday night to discuss aspects of the deal, which Washington described as a "welcome" development.
Russian foreign ministry later put out a statement saying that Sergei Lavrov, the foreign minister, had discussed the agreement with Baroness Ashton, the European Union's foreign policy chief, and agreed to "continue contacts" on the matter.
[Source: By Roland Oliphant, Kiev, The Telegraph, London, 21Feb14]
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