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Ukrainian president denies problems with minority languages

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KIEV, March 22 (RIA Novosti) - Ukraine's president dismissed Wednesday claims that the authorities were opposed to the development of languages of ethnic minorities in the country.

"Ethnic minorities in Ukraine do not have problems with their languages, whether they be Russians, Jews, Greeks or any other minority," Viktor Yushchenko told a news conference.

The status of the Russian language, in particular, has become a hotly disputed issue in the run-up to parliamentary elections on March 26. The city authorities in Kharkov, in the largely pro-Russian west of Ukraine, recently voted to make Russian a regional language, much to the ire of many nationalist politicians.

However, the incumbent authorities have resisted calls to make Russian an official language, a move that Yushchenko, who came to power in 2004 with a Western-leaning agenda, has already said would fail to correspond to national issues.

Earlier Wednesday, parliamentary speaker Volodymyr Lytvyn, who is considered to be pro-Russian by some, also spoke against Russian becoming an official language as it would replace Ukrainian. "This is impossible in a country called Ukraine," he said.

With the parliamentary polls approaching, the status of Russian has become something of a battleground, but Lytvyn, who heads his own eponymous bloc, said people who could speak no language perfectly were raising the issue of two languages.

Yushchenko himself branded any attempt to raise the issue of ethnic minorities' languages "political adventurism" pursued by forces that could not win public support any other way.

In another matter related to the election, the Ukrainian leader said there were serious problems with voters' registration on the eve of March 26 poll and urged people to visit polling stations prior to elections to make changes to election rolls if they were needed.

He said 37 million voters had been registered so far and the election rolls compiled by current authorities were the most complete and honest in the history of the country, although he admitted they were not ideal. The country has a population of about 47.5 million.

Yushchenko said 1.2 million "dead souls" had been added to the lists during the country's last presidential election, referring to Nikolai Gogol's tale of skullduggery in the 19th century.

"To eliminate the same practice forever, we should create a national population register that will allow us to always have correct election rolls," he said.

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