Ukrainian opposition leader Julia Timoshenko (R) shakes hands with Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko before last consultation of leaders of parliamentary groups and President in presidential office in Kiev on Monday, 02 April 2007. Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko ordered parliament dissolved on Monday, triggering a constitutional crisis.
Kiev - Ukraine's political players on Tuesday were taking up hard-line negotiating positions, and speaking little of compromise, as the country reacted to news President Viktor Yushchenko had dissolved parliament and sparked a constitutional crisis.
A pro-Europe politician supporting market reforms, Yushchenko ordered the legislature dismissed on Monday evening, citing alleged constitutional violations in forming the ruling coalition and calling for early elections.
Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovich, leader of a parliament majority supporting close relations with Russia and government support to big business, denounced Yushchenko's order as illegal.
Between 255 and 262 pro-Yanukovich members of parliament depending on the time - in any case a working majority in the 450-seat house - attended an unprecedented early-morning emergency session of parliament devoted to passing a raft of bills aimed at making Yushchenko's order null and void.
The legislature, after sometimes vicious speeches against Yushchenko, dismissed the leadership of the central election committee and made illegal financing of any election in the immediate future.
By constitutional statute, early elections would take place May 27.
'We will not be dictated to,' Parliamentary Speaker Oleksander Moroz said.
Ukraine's national legislature the Verhovna Rada in addition took a first step towards placing the dispute in the hands of the supreme constitutional court, passing a resolution declaring Yushchenko's dissolution order unconstitutional and asking the court to rule on the matter by Friday.
Roman Zwarych, a top Yushchenko spokesman, worked into the early morning hours as well, appearing on news programmes on most of the country's major channels to describe the Rada moves as 'illegal' on grounds Yushchenko's dismissal of parliament made any Rada session impossible until new elections are held.
Politicians on both sides of the conflict were quick in media interviews to allege substantial military forces, often 15,000 special-force police supported by tanks, were en route to Kiev to impose martial law.
Vasyl Pushko, head of the national police force, dismissed the allegations, saying that 'aside from the placement of a few additional guards to government buildings' in the capital, he had not ordered any security reinforcements to the capital.
Security guards at parliament were admitting only MPs and accredited journalists - a move widely seen as intended to prevent a physical takeover of the legislature by either side.
Street demonstrators were on hand as well, those supporting Yushchenko in tents pitched in Kiev's central Maidan square, Yanukovich supporters in a competing encampment in a park next to parliament.
Each side numbered a few hundred, and spent the night quietly. A column of some 2,000 pro-Yanukovich demonstrators snarled morning traffic in the centre of the Ukrainian capital, but otherwise Kiev's streets and sidewalks were typical of a normal work day, police said.
Yushchenko scored an important vote of support over the night, as the country's leaders took sides in the conflict, with Defence Minister Anatoly Hrystenko stating 'the army will follow the law ... and orders issued by its legal commander-in-chief, the president.'
Regional police bosses checked in with support to one of the two sides throughout the morning, with senior officials in the Russian- speaking Kharkiv and Crimea provinces expressing support to Yanukovich, and the Ukrainian-speaking Lutsk province to Yushchenko.
In Washington, the US State Department urged the Ukrainian leadership to resolve the crisis peacefully.
'We are monitoring closely developments in Ukraine and urge all parties to respect the rule of law and resolve disputes nonviolently, in a manner consistent with Ukraine's democratic values and national interests,' spokesman Sean McCormack said in a statement.
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