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Ukraine PM Yekhanurov says no to work in Yanukovych Cabinet

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Ukraine's current premier said in an interview with a respected Russian daily Thursday that he would never take up a seat in the Cabinet of a pro-Russia prime minister-designate.
MOSCOW, July 27 (RIA Novosti) - Ukraine's current premier said in an interview with a respected Russian daily Thursday that he would never take up a seat in the Cabinet of a pro-Russia prime minister-designate.

The Party of Regions, which heads the current parliamentary coalition in Ukraine, has put forward the candidacy of its leader, Viktor Yanukovych, to President Viktor Yushchenko. The president has until August 2 to decide whether to back the candidacy of his former rival or to dissolve parliament as no government was formed within a constitutional deadline.

"I have no intention of working in Yanukovych's government," Yuriy Yekhanurov, leader of the pro-presidential Our Ukraine bloc, told Izvestia.

A third option for the president and his party could be joining the opposition together with the pro-Western bloc of Yulia Tymoshenko, the former premier and Yushchenko's ally in the "orange revolution" that propelled him to power in 2004. The two movements were part of a parliamentary coalition that seemed set to form a government before it collapsed after the Socialist Party withdrew.

Yekhanurov, a staunch supporter of the president, said that if Yanukovych took office, he would resign and continue working in the parliamentary committee of science and education.

"As soon as a new government takes the helm, I will focus on science and education in parliament," he said. "This is something I want to do, but I remember that I am the president's man and I must work where he wants me to work."

The current legislature canceled Tuesday a decision of the previous parliament to fire the Yekhanurov government, which was made in January following a bitter gas pricing dispute with Russia. The president said early this year that the decision breached the constitution and appealed to the Constitutional Court. But the court is yet to be formed because parliament has been mired in months of turmoil since elections in March and has failed to nominate candidate judges.

Yekhanurov said the move to invalidate the January decision was a mere political game.

"It is all a game but I am not an expert. It is a job for the lawyers," Yekhanurov said, adding that he considered himself to be "a unique prime minister."

"I will write this in my memoirs: 'I led a government that was dismissed several times but then came back to work'," he said.

Yekhanurov also said that his Cabinet had managed to raise real household incomes by more than 20%.

"We have filled up the pension fund, given a boost to social programs, and got down to cleansing the gray economic sector," he said.

Yekhanurov said Ukraine would remain committed to pro-European development, no matter how quickly it happened.

"Our main problems are an ill-bred elite and a tradition to stab your friends in the back," he said. "Hence the saying: Ukrainians do not need enemies, they do the job well themselves."

The prime minister said some members of parliament served as a graphic illustration of this proverb.

Given that crowds have taken to the streets in Kiev, Yekhanurov said he was not worried that the political impasse in Ukraine could end up a repeat of a crisis in Russia in October 1993 when President Boris Yeltsin ordered tanks to shell the government building in central Moscow, the White House, to bring a rebellious parliament to heel.

"I expect no shelling of parliament - we will find our own solution to the problem," he said. "Our politicians are calmer than in Russia. They are proactive but quiet."

The political wrangling in Ukraine's parliament between the West-leaning and the pro-Russia parties has led to members of the Yulia Tymoshenko Bloc throwing eggs at the Socialists after they defected from their coalition, fist-fights in the chamber and members using sirens and megaphones to drown each other out.

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