STRASBOURG, April 16 (RIA Novosti) - A political crisis gripping Ukraine will be in the focus of a Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) session Thursday, a senior Russian lawmaker said Monday.
Konstantin Kosachev, who leads the Russian delegation to the body, said PACE which has refrained from direct involvement in the situation was expected to pass a resolution and express its opinion on recent events in the ex-Soviet state.
Ukraine, a transit state for Russian energy exports to Europe, has been locked in a standoff between factions backing the president and those supporting the prime minister since Viktor Yushchenko ordered April 2 the dissolution of parliament over the expansion of the majority coalition backing the prime minister.
The factions have been facing each other off in central streets of the capital, Kiev, pending a Constitutional Court ruling on the order.
Kosachev said PACE had made the decision Monday and confirmed earlier reports that Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych would address the session in Strasbourg at midday local time Tuesday.
The PACE President Rene van der Linden said Monday he hoped a debate would help political leaders in Ukraine find a solution to the crisis simmering since August, when the former presidential hopeful returned as premier under a power-sharing deal.
He said Yanukovych would be given the opportunity to speak in front of European representatives. He added Foreign Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk, the president's ally, had also requested the floor at the session and was free to attend.
Other issues to be raised at the spring session, which will last until April 20, include democracy in Belarus and espionage trials in Russia.
The Council of Europe said earlier Belarusian opposition leaders Alexander Milinkevich and Anatoly Lebedko had been invited to participate. The wife of Alexander Kozulin, a presidential hopeful in the March 2006 race who has been in custody since protests in Minsk late last year, is also expected to speak.
International human rights groups have repeatedly voiced concerns over democratic processes in Belarus, where President Alexander Lukashenko took office for a third time in elections described as fraudulent by the United States and Europe.
And parliamentarians will study a report by Cyprus's Christos Pourgourides and approved by PACE's Legal Affairs Committee in September, which said Igor Sutyagin, Valentin Danilov and Mikhail Trepashkin, convicted of espionage in Russia, should be freed as they did not receive fair trials.
"The climate of 'spy mania' fuelled by these cases, and controversial statements made by senior government representatives, are obstacles to the healthy development of civil society in this country," the report said, while also expressing concerns about German, Swiss, Italian and U.S. authorities' attempts to prosecute media for alleged breaches of state secrecy.
