Forum for National Salvation is established (02/18/01)

Forum for National Salvation is established

by Jan Maksymiuk
RFE/RL Poland, Belarus and Ukraine Report

PRAGUE - A group of Ukrainian politicians and lawmakers on February 9 set up a movement called the Forum for National Salvation, Interfax reported. The main goal of the Forum for National Salvation is to depose President Leonid Kuchma and transform Ukraine into a parliamentary-presidential or parliamentary republic.

The forum declared in its manifesto "to put an end to the criminal regime, assert the truth and the law, and bring Ukraine back onto the path of European development."

The forum's coordinating council is made up of 15 people, including Socialist Party leader Oleksander Moroz, National Deputy Serhii Holovatyi, Sobor Party leader Anatolii Matvienko, Cherkasy Mayor Volodymyr Oliinyk, Fatherland Party leaders Yulia Tymoshenko and Oleksander Turchynov, National Deputy Taras Chornovil, Volodymyr Chemerys, a leader of the Ukraine Without Kuchma protest actions, and National Deputy Stepan Khmara.

Mr. Matvienko said Ukraine is currently facing two dangers: "the agony of the mendacious presidential authority" and the reflux of "the wave of awakening" as a result of developments surrounding the disappearance of independent journalist Heorhii Gongadze.

Ms. Tymoshenko noted that the forum's primary goal is "to give people hope for changes for the better and to build a democratic state."

National Deputy Oleksii Shekhovtsov announced that the forum will soon begin consultations with other lawmakers to initiate the impeachment of President Kuchma in the Verkhovna Rada.

Meanwhile, Mr. Kuchma told the Financial Times on February 10 that he had no role in the death of independent journalist Mr. Gongadze. "I can swear on the Bible or on the Constitution that I never made such an order to destroy a human being. This is simply absurd," he noted.

President Kuchma said the tapes provided by his former bodyguard, Mykola Melnychenko, are a montage of different conversations recorded "probably" in his office. "Maybe the name Gongadze came up in conversations, I don't remember. But I give you my honest word, I did not even know this journalist," Mr. Kuchma said.

He noted that the tape scandal was staged by a "well-organized force" with "a great deal of money and capabilities," but added "I completely reject the idea that this was done on the level of states, that it was the Americans or the Russians."

A day earlier, President Kuchma noted that the current anti-presidential actions by the opposition threaten the national security and independence of Ukraine. "If strategic investors and serious foreign companies do not come to Ukraine to take part in privatization - the results will be [obvious]," Interfax quoted Mr. Kuchma as saying.

According to the president, some opposition leaders remind him of "Lenins" who take "not people, but a herd of cattle" to the streets. He also compared the anti-presidential rally in Kyiv on February 6 to the coup attempt of Hitler and his associates in Munich in November 1923, saying on February 9 that "there is only one step from such national socialism to fascism."

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