>From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
>To: "International"<[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>Date: Mon, 31 Jan 2000 14:22:06 -0500
>
>INTERNATIONAL ACTION CENTER SPECIAL REPORT
>
>IS US BEHIND 'QUIET COUP' IN UKRAINE?
>
>Ramsey Clark, IAC Protest Move to Set Up Presidential Dictatorship
>
>KIEV, Ukraine--US officials and Ukrainian president Leonid Kuchma
>are collaborating in an effort to break up Ukraine's parliament and
>concentrate power in the president's hands, Ukrainian opposition
>leaders told International Action Center representatives last week.
>IAC members Larissa Kritskaya and Bill Doares were in Kiev to
>attend a hearing of the International Peoples Tribunal on NATO War
>Crimes in Yugoslavia (English translation; see accompanying
>dispatch). It appears that Washington's goal is to bring Ukraine into
>NATO and to smash parliamentary resistance to the privatization of
>land and other measures demanded by the International Monetary
>Fund.
>
>This former Soviet republic now has two rival parliaments in the wake
>of an attempt by Kuchma to illegally oust parliament speaker
>Oleksandr Tkachenko and deputy speaker Adam Martynyuk. The
>two have accused Kuchma of falsifying the results of last November's
>presidential election. Their charges were borne out by European
>Union electoral observers.
>
>GORE AND KUCHMA--PARTNERS IN CRIME The regime's
>action came on the heels of a private meeting in Washington between
>Kuchma and US vice president Al Gore. Kuchma was first elected in
>1996 with considerable support from the CIA-linked Soros
>Foundation.
>
>To engineer Tkachenko and Martynyuk's removal, rightwing
>Verkhovnye Rada (parliament) deputies and their allies held an
>extralegal gathering in a nongovernment building Jan. 21 at the same
>time as an official Rada session was in progress. The unconstitutional
>gathering voted to oust Tkachenko and Martynyuk and replace them
>with Kuchma allies and to abolish the basic democratic right of
>parliamentary immunity. It also named a new head of the central bank.
>Tkachenko and Martynyuk were not invited to the session or told of
>the charges against them. The only record of the vote and attendance
>at the rightwing gathering is the claims of its organizers. Previous
>attempts to remove Tkachenko and Martynyuk by constitutional
>means had failed.
>
>As of this writing, Tkachenko is refusing to leave his office. His phone
>and fax have been disconnected and state television is refusing to air
>his statements. His official security has been removed and he is being
>guarded by Communist, Socialist and Peasant Party deputies.
>Tkachenko is a member of the Peasant Party and Martynyuk is in the
>Communist Party. The confrontation may come to a head Feb. 1
>when the Rada is scheduled to reconvene after winter recess.
>
>"There has been considerable pressure to forcibly Westernize
>Ukraine," speaker Tkachenko told the IAC. "The presidential election
>was determined by force and now the president wants to use force
>against parliament. He is trying to create an artificial majority in order
>to concentrate power in his hands. Our constitution has been violated
>at every step."
>
>Kuchma's ultimate aim is to abolish the existing single-chamber Rada
>where many "reforms" demanded by US bankers and Kuchma's
>wealthy allies have been blocked. He wants to replace it with a a
>smaller, two-chamber body with an upper chamber comprising
>regional governors appointed by himself. To achieve this, he has
>ordered a "popular referendum" that will presumably be as controlled
>as last year's presidential election.
>
>WALL STREET RULES With nearly 50 million people, Ukraine is
>the second-largest former Soviet republic. It was one of the USSR's
>most productive agricultural and industrial regions. Today, like other
>former Soviet republics, it has been devastated by "economic
>restructuring" dictated by the International Monetary Fund. Since the
>fall of the USSR, Ukraine's industrial production has dropped 70
>percent. Its population has fallen by 2 million in just the past two
>years. The old-age pension is $13 a month and millions of workers
>are not being paid. While hunger stalks many regions, one-third of the
>state budget goes in interest payments to Western banks. The
>country's debt has risen 30 times since Kuchma took office in 1996.
>
>The Kuchma regime has tried to create a fascist-like atmosphere by
>exploiting divisions similar to those used to break up Yugoslavia. It
>has whipped up Ukrainian nationalism on an anti-Russian basis (one-
>quarter of the population is Russian). Soviet-era books have been
>burned in public squares and opposition activists attacked by fascist
>gangs. The regime's alleged nationalism does not stop Wall Street
>from dictating its economic policy. It has agreed to raise food and fuel
>prices, rents and gas and electricity rates on a schedule dictated by the
>International Monetary Fund.
>
>"It is obvious that the United States has designed the Ukraine's
>political landscape," Oleg Grachev, Kiev regional secretary of the
>Communist Party of Ukraine (KPU), told Kritskaya and Doares.
>"You cannot speak about injustice and electoral falsification in this
>country without speaking of the domination of the International
>Monetary Fund."
>
>MARKED BALLOTS AND HAND GREANDES KPU general
>secretary Petro Simonenko, who calls for Ukraine to withdraw from
>the IMF, was the runner-up in November's presidential election. He
>got an official 38 percent of the vote. The KPU brought evidence of
>marked ballots, ballot-box stuffing and vote-buying to Ukraine's
>criminal court but was told such matters were outside the court's
>jurisdiction. In the first round of the presidential election, Progressive
>Socialist Party candidate Natalia Vitorienko, who also condemns the
>IMF, was injured by a hand grenade tossed into a rally she was
>addressing.
>
>"Kuchma is trying to make a coup to gain absolute power," said
>Ukraine Socialist Party leader Pavel Moroz. "He is acting on behalf of
>powerful private groups that support him. Since Kuchma came to
>office, Ukraine has gotten poorer but his friends have gotten rich.
>They now want to get even richer by selling shares in land and
>grabbing control of basic industries like steel, petrochemicals and even
>oil and gas, which is now forbidden to be privatized."
>
>On Jan. 29, workers across Ukraine marched to protest the IMF-
>Kuchma program and to demand unpaid back wages. Jan. 29 is the
>anniversary of the 1918 uprising by Kiev's Arsenal workers that was
>drowned in blood by the Western-backed regime that then ruled
>Ukraine. The opposition has called for mass demonstrations outside
>parliament on Feb. 1 in support of Tkachenko and Martynyuk.
>
>Former US attorney general and IAC founder Ramsey Clark sent
>letters of protest to president Kuchma and the Rada.
>
>An IAC statement said, "Like the war against Yugoslavia, the
>attempted presidential coup in Ukraine is part of the NATO-Pentagon
>drive to the east, which carries great danger for all humanity. The US
>corporate media, which so obediently repeated Pentagon-State
>Department lies about Kosovo, appears to have imposed an
>information blockade on the events in Ukraine and US involvement
>there. We must break that blockade. The democratic forces in
>Ukraine deserve the support of antiwar and justice-loving people in
>this country and around the world."
>
>Letters of support can be faxed to Deputy V.N. Romashenko at 011
>380 44 293 2792 or 011 380 44 229 7228.
>
>
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