Roger ROMAIN
a/conseiller communal
B6180 COURCELLES
sites web : http://www1.brutele.be/users/r.romain/Sommario.html
http://www1.brutele.be/users/r.romain/enbref.html
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----- Original Message -----
From: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: "International" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Monday, January 31, 2000 8:22 PM
Subject: IAC special report: U.S. behind 'quiet coup' in Ukraine?
> 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.
>
